

ANNA CHAPIN RAY 


\ ; V A f -/CA > A ytjL 




& 








Class _JP_/ 

Rnnk ' ~K~l l~B 
Copyright N? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



L 











































































































































































































































BUDDIE 

THE STORY OF A BOY 


* 












































































































































. 























■“ That ’s too bad. I thought you came in by Castle Garden, 
not by Plymouth Rock.” 

Frontispiece. See page 29. 


€Ije 2$u&t>ie 25ooftsf 


BUDDIE 

THE STORY OF A BOY 


BY 

ANNA CHAPIN RAY 

Author of the “Teddy” Books, the “Sidney” Books, etc. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY 
HARRIET ROOSEVELT RICHARDS 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1911 





Copyright , 1911, 

By Little, Brown, and Company, 
All rights reserved 

Published, May, 1911 





THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 


©CI.A286782 


CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I Daddy 1 

II The New Home 14 

III The Girl Next Door 26 

IV Buddie’s New School 40 

V Pet-Lamb and Ebenezer .... 53 

VI Aunt Julia’s Dinner Party ... 65 

VII The Boys’ Sport 78 

VIII The Arrival of the Circus ... 91 

IX In the Strawberry Bed .... 105 

X Vacation 119 

XI Sandy’s Surprise Party .... 132 
XII Pet-Lamb’s Bath 144 

XIII Daddy’s Letters 157 

XIV The Boy Scouts’ Rifles .... 170 

XV Buddie’s First Novel 184 

XVI The Regatta 196 

XVII Buddie’s Surprise 209 

XVIII Ebenezer and the Bishop . . . 223 

XIX The Burglars 236 

XX The Rifle Match 250 

XXI Ebenezer Makes Good 262 

XXII Buddie’s Christmas Gift .... 276 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“That’s too bad. I suppose you came in by 

Castle Garden, not by Plymouth Rock ” Frontispiece 


The chariots, though, were covered; the beasts, 

for the most part, invisible Page 99 

Buddie entered by way of the window sill ... “147 

The Bishop arrived just in season for afternoon 

tea “22^ 





BUDDIE: 

THE STORY OF A BOY 


CHAPTER ONE 

DADDY 

“ A LL the boys that go to our school are awful 
milksops; that is, except the teacher. I 
don’t know, though, but she is the worst one of all,” 
Buddie explained to his father from above his arith- 
metic, one evening. 

Fate had dealt with Buddie malignly, in that it 
had sent him out into the world, the chuckling 
world, named Ernest Angell. To be sure, there 
had always been an Ernest in the Angell family, 
just as there had always been a doctor; and Buddie’s 
mother, whose sense of humour had been far less 
than was her sense of loyalty to all that concerned 
her husband’s clan, had insisted upon carrying out 
the family tradition. Buddie had gone to the bap- 
tismal font, an innocent and nameless babe, treated 
with universal respect. He had come away again, 
labelled in a fashion to justify the kickings of his 
worsted-booted heels, a source of merriment to 
anybody who paused to chuck him underneath the 
chin and ask him, — 

“Wot’s ’oo’s name, itty pet?” 


2 


BUDDIE 


The sentimental smile and the cooing tones 
both vanished, before the answer of the nurse. At 
first, Buddie crowed lustily, in sympathy with the 
unfailing laugh which followed. Later on, the laugh 
had displeased him. Realizing its cause, its total 
justification in the fact, he had set to work to undo 
the associations so painfully apparent in his name. 

“A fellow can’t help it, if his great grandmother 
did n’t have any more sense than a treetoad,” he 
asserted to a chaffing mate. “Puritans didn’t; 
that’s what ailed them. And, anyhow, I’d sooner 
be Ernest Angell than Algernon Tod, any day in 
the week. Besides, at home they call me Buddie; 
and if any fellow here but the teacher ever calls me 
anything else, I’ll give him the worst licking that 
ever was.” 

The schoolmate ceased to chaff, and gazed uneasily 
at the muscular, red-headed youngster before him, 
a youngster puffing himself out like a turkey cock 
and manifestly eager for the fray. Then he decided 
to temporize. 

“But, if it’s your name?” he began slowly. 

Buddie cut him off, cut him off promptly and 
ungrammatically . 

“’Taint, if it don’t fit. Use it, and you’ll get 
what’s coming to you.” And Buddie swung him- 
self about and turned away. 

It was Buddie’s first day in the new school, and 
the explanation was needed, by way of starting 
things upon a proper basis. Later, had Buddie 
only possessed himself in patience, the matter would 
have adjusted itself without an explanation. No 
one, after ten hours in the society of Buddie, ever, 
ever would have dreamed of addressing him as 


DADDY 


3 


Ernest Angell. No one, that is, but Teacher. She 
had the responsibilities of her position; but even 
she, out of hours, fell from grace and dubbed him 
Buddie. And, after all, the suitability of the nick- 
name was more a matter of pure theory than of 
fact. Buddie was brother to no mortal thing. An 
only child, he was the torment of his nurse, the 
boon companion of his frowsy dog, and the constant 
joy and comrade of his father whose young wife 
had died when Buddie still was in the red and 
flabby stage of backboneless babyhood. Buddie 
still was red; however, nowadays, he was by no 
means flabby. 

From the days of his kindergarten onward, Buddie 
had betrayed his long heritage of Yankee ingenuity 
in devising mischief. It was Buddie who, in that 
kindergarten, had persisted in developing his colour 
work in mingled patches of dark blue and royal 
purple, or else in deep pink and orange, patches 
which shrieked defiance at each other; Buddie who 
had built his castles upon such insecure foundations 
that they invariably toppled over upon the struc- 
tures of his neighbours, just at the very instant 
when those neighbours were demanding approba- 
tion from the teacher. It was Buddie who added 
a fistful of tadpoles and a small, crawly turtle to 
the globe of goldfish; Buddie who squeezed a long, 
curly thread of paste out of the tube and into the 
box of wools and bits of perforated paper. A little 
later on, when real, true school had taken the place 
of kindergarten games, it was Buddie who first saw 
the possibilities of the string-bag in which Teacher 
the Second kept her rubbers, and substituted for 
those rubbers a brace of blindly squirming kittens. 


4 


BUDDIE 


The kittens promptly embraced the meshes of the 
bag with their spotty paws, and, although wailing 
loudly for their absent mamma, yet refused to be 
dislodged until Teacher the Second attacked the 
question — and also the bag — with shears. Bud- 
die took his punishment like a man, stoutly affirm- 
ing that it was well worth the while, in view of what 
had gone before. 

It was Buddie, too, who, working swiftly and from 
the underside, filled the schoolroom sponges up 
with whitewash, and then amicably gave way to 
his mates in the daily strife as to which one of 
them should be allowed to clean the blackboards. 
It was Buddie who put snuff in the books of his 
chiefest rival for headship of the school, and reduced 
him to a sneezing ruin on the annual exhibition day. 
It was Buddie who never studied, Buddie who kept 
the school in an uproar by his pranks, and, alas and 
alas for discipline, Buddie who always knew his 
lessons. Furthermore, also alas for discipline, Bud- 
die kept all the rules. The only trouble lay in his 
resourceful brain which invented new exceptions a 
long way faster than his teachers could frame new 
rules to fit them. 

All this was in school. At home, it was far dif- 
ferent. Daddy was at home; and Daddy was 
always to be obeyed, Daddy whom he adored, 
Daddy who always understood. 

He understood now. That was the best of 
Daddy. One could tell him facts, without wast- 
ing time in preliminary explanations. 

“What was the row, to-day, Buddie?” he queried, 
as he let his evening paper fall across his knee. 

Buddie, casting down his eyes, yet had the grace 


DADDY 5 

to blush. Nevertheless, the corners of his lips 
belied the blush. 

“How could I know Teacher didn’t like hop- 
toads?” he asked, with as jaunty a nonchalance as 
he was able to assume at such short notice. 

“Buddie! You didn’t—” And then Daddy 
spoke more quietly. “I thought my son had some 
chivalry.” 

A tangle on Ebenezer’s brow held Buddie’s atten- 
tion for an instant. Ebenezer was the bob-tailed 
sheep dog, and abounded in tangles. This one 
seemed obdurate, but at last Buddie detached him- 
self from it, long enough to answer, — 

“I don’t see what chivalry has got to do with it.” 

“Frightening Miss Gilbert?” his father suggested. 

“She wasn’t frightened; she only just jumped a 
little, same as the toad,” Buddie argued, and his 
eyes now matched the lips below them, thin lips 
and sensitive, but very, very merry. “Really, 
Dad, you should have seen them. The toad jumped 
boo at her, and then she jumped boo back at him. 
They were just about as fat as each other, only the 
toad did n’t have any hairpins to lose out. She ’s 
always losing hairpins. One dropped down Billy 
Bourne’s neck inside his collar, one day when she 
was showing him about his fractions, and he had to 
get an excuse and go out into the hall quite by him- 
self, before he could get it out again.” 

But Daddy refused to be decoyed along this side 
track of the conversation. Instead, he said Things 
to Buddie, quietly as was his wont, but very plainly 
and in a fashion that made Buddie, in after years, 
powerless to forget them. That done, he yielded 
to his curiosity. 


BUDDIE 


“But where in the world did you get a toad, 
Buddie?” he queried, for, as a rule, hoptoads are 
not found strolling along the upper stretches of 
Madison Avenue in New York. 

“I picked him up, last Saturday, when we went 
over to Staten Island,” Buddie answered promptly. 

“Where have you been keeping him ever since?” 
Daddy asked, while he stretched out his hand for 
his pipe. 

The hand stayed itself, however, at the reply of 
Buddie who spoke without the slightest sense of 
having committed any indiscretion. 

“In your tobacco jar. It’s been empty for a 
few days, you know, and it made a bully house for 
him. It was so tight that the flies I put in for him 
to eat could n’t get away, and so shallow that he 
could reach them without having to stretch his 
poor old legs too far. He was a perfect old grand- 
daddy, you know, and slow as beans. If she’d 
had the least bit of sense, she’d have known she 
need n’t have been so frightened at him, when he 
tried to jump, even if he did strike her as being 
rather sudden.” 

It was with a sense of relief upon him that Daddy 
accepted the chance to abandon his pipe in favour 
of moral precepts. The last phrases of his pre- 
cepts, however, were destined to echo long in Bud- 
die’s brain. 

“It’s always sneaky, Buddie, to tease an animal, 
or a woman. They can’t strike back again; the 
advantage is all on your side, and it’s mean to 
make the most of it. Have all the fun you can, as 
long as they can laugh with you. When they stop 
laughing, you generally can take it for granted 


DADDY 


7 


that it’s time to stop. That’s all for this lecture, 
son. Now give Ebenezer his biscuit, and then get 
the cribbage board. No lessons after eight o’clock, 
you know.” 

“But ’spose I flunk, to-morrow?” Buddie ob- 
jected, although he banged his book together and 
rose with alacrity. 

“Better flunk than fidget,” his father responded 
tersely. “You’ve got to be healthy, whatever 
comes. The lessons are a secondary matter.” 

“I ’spose that’s because you’re a doctor,” Buddie 
made thoughtful soliloquy, as he departed from the 
room, with Ebenezer at his heels. 

But his father, left behind, became more thought- 
ful still. He knew too well the possibilities which 
Buddie had inherited from his girl mother, knew 
too well, also, the danger that had fallen on himself 
by reason of his constant and devoted attendance 
upon his dear girl wife. At the time, it had seemed 
to him the only thing for him to do. Later, how- 
ever, had come another side of the question, the 
side that was concerning itself nowadays with his 
responsibilities regarding Buddie. 

Buddie, going bedward with Ebenezer trudging 
after him, an hour later, was convinced that the 
game of cribbage had been the jolliest ever. And 
when, a few minutes afterward, he nestled down 
among the blankets, he sailed away to dreamland, 
totally unconscious that the ended evening marked 
an ended epoch. Ebenezer, scorning his scarlet bed 
upon the floor and unlawfully sprawling across his 
young master’s feet, was no more free from any 
grim forebodings. 

It was a good week later, a week of pranks and 


8 


BUDDIE 


of the grave responsibilities of boyhood, that, of a 
sudden, the forebodings materialized. All that 
week, Buddie had been vaguely aware that Daddy 
was silent, abstracted; but Buddie, with the opti- 
mism of healthy boyhood, laid the abstraction to 
some dangerous case or other, regretted for the 
dozenth time that Daddy was a doctor and at the 
beck and call of other people, and then ignored the 
matter utterly. 

And then, one night, Daddy spoke, gravely, and 
with his eyes upon the fire. 

“Buddie, never mind the lessons,” he said, while 
he laid aside the paper at which, for upward of an 
hour, he had been gazing with unseeing eyes. 

Nothing loath, Buddie shut his book, and went 
to join Ebenezer on the rug. Ebenezer, roused 
from puppy dreams of cats to chase and many 
bones, blinked sleepily, sighed, laid one raggy and 
apologetic paw on Buddie’s arm, and once more fell 
asleep. Buddie stroked the tousled gray head for 
a minute, while he waited for his father to speak 
again. Then, as the silence lasted unduly long, — 

“Let her go, Dad,” he bade his father encourag- 
ingly. 

For a whole week now, Daddy had been conning 
the subject which lay before him, turning it over 
and over in his mind, choosing now this handle and 
now that by which to introduce it. When it came, 
however, it was all wrong end first. 

“Buddie,” he said; “I think I’m going to — to 
make a change in — in your school.” 

Buddie, forgetful of Ebenezer, rolled over on his 
back to face his father more directly. The shaded 
reading lamp upon the table left his father’s face in 


DADDY 


9 


shadow, but threw a strong shaft of light down on 
the honest, earnest freckled face, down on the 
boyish figure, strong and sturdy in its every limb. 

“What’s the row, Daddy?” he asked, in frank 
astonishment. “Has Teacher been on the rampage 
again? Honestly, I have n’t been doing a thing, 
for more than a week.” 

“It is n’t that, Buddie.” Out of the shadow, the 
voice came hesitatingly. 

Buddie clasped his hands behind his head and 
doubled up his knees. 

“Then what?” he queried tersely. 

“The school is all right,” his father reassured him. 
“So are you, for that matter. Your last-month 
marks were the best yet. It’s only that — ” he 
cleared his throat; “that I find I’ve got to go away 
from home, for a little while.” 

“Jolly!” Buddie made animated assent. “I’ve 
always wanted to go a journey. Is it Europe? Or 
just professional? And how soon?” 

His father did his best to answer the comprehen- 
sive questions as briefly as he was able. Indeed, 
why prolong the agony with many words? 

“It’s professional, but not Europe, Buddie; and 
it’s going to be next week. The worst of it is, son,” 
and an older listener than Buddie would have been 
aware that his father was stiffening in every nerve 
and sinew; “the very worst of it all is that I can’t 
take you with me.” 

With a sudden snap, Buddie was sitting upright 
and gazing at his father with horrified eyes. 

“Daddy!” 

“Yes, son, I know.” 

“But we’ve never been apart in all our lives; 


10 


BUDDIE 


never, never! And we can’t get on without each 
other! Daddy, you wouldn’t?” The last words 
were insistent in their appeal. 

“Not if I could help it, Buddie. But I can’t.” 

“How long?” Buddie demanded. 

“Six months, perhaps. Perhaps a year.” 

Buddie lay back again, and buried his face in 
Ebenezer’s tousled side. 

“A year is always,” he muttered brokenly at 
length. 

But his father, knowing all the danger, yet was 
of better courage. It might be always, he was 
well aware; but, if human skill should make it 
possible, the months would be more finite. 

Nevertheless, it was long before either one of 
them could come down to discussing practical de- 
tails. The sorrow of their parting must be faced, 
and they faced it, man-fashion, without many 
words, without much expression of endearment. 
And yet, each one of them was well aware of all 
that the other was suffering. Buddie gulped bravely, 
and hugged Ebenezer tight with a vague notion that 
Daddy would know the hugs were really meant for 
him. Daddy watched the boyish figure on the 
rug, until both figure and rug vanished in a haze. 
Then he arose and punched the fire to pieces. By 
the time he had picked up the pieces and piled them 
together once more, he was able to speak quite 
steadily. 

“And now for the planning, Buddie. If I go off 
and leave you, you can’t well stay on here.” 

“What then?” Buddie made listless answer. 

“Before I go,” his father’s voice surprised him 
with its old-time ring, and Buddie wondered dully 


DADDY 


11 


whether, after all their years together, Daddy 
really and truly didn’t care; “before I go, I am 
going to pack you off to Aunt Julia.” 

Buddie’s listlessness vanished before his sur- 
prise. Once more he sat up, this time with a sud- 
denness akin to that of his recent friend, the toad. 

“Aunt Julia!” 

“Yes.” 

“But — but maybe she won’t want me,” Buddie 
protested. “Aunt Julia is n’t a person to go in 
much for boys.” 

“I think we need n’t worry too much about that, 
Buddie,” his father told him, with a calmness born 
of his professional need of laying down a law of life 
for other people. “Aunt Julia will be very kind to 
you, and you could n’t have a better place to live 
than in that dear old home of hers. I had my 
own boyhood there, and I know all about it.” 

“Yes; but you won’t be there with me now, and 
that makes all the difference,” Buddie said, a bit 
disconsolately. “I’d have the time of my life 
there, if you were another boy in the same house. 
But Aunt Julia! Whizzikins! She makes me feel 
cross-eyed in my spine. She always knows it when 
a fellow’s boots are muddy, or when the button 
loses out of one end of his collar. Besides, what 
about Ebenezer?” 

“I wrote to her that you would bring your dog 
with you,” Daddy answered. 

“Hm! You wrote. But what does she say 
back again?” Buddie questioned shrewdly. 

If Daddy winced at the question, he did not 
show it. Aunt Julia was his younger sister, his 
half-sister, and younger by many years. She lived 


BUDDIE 


12 

in the old family home on the outskirts of a New 
England city, lived there alone with her servants, 
and her pretty clothes, and her many clubs and 
social hobbies. And, under her dainty rule, the 
old family home seemed scarcely likely to be hos- 
pitable to such a boy as Buddie, to such a dog as 
Ebenezer. Rather, indeed, would it have been fit 
dwelling place for one Ernest Angell, leading after 
him by a broad blue ribbon a freshly laundered 
poodle. 

“I haven’t had time to get a letter back again, 
Buddie; not really.” 

“Bet you won’t. She never writes. When did 
your letter go?” 

“Tuesday.” 

“Hh! And this is Monday. Still, old maids 
always are dead slow,” Buddie made frank com- 
ment. “Perhaps she won’t take me.” 

“I think she will.” 

“Wish she wouldn’t.” Buddie grumbled. “I’ll 
have to black my shoes, every day; and wear 
pumps to dinner, and all that stuff and nonsense. 
Daddy,” his fist smote sharply on the flank of 
Ebenezer, now rolled up in the smallest possible 
ball and snoring lustily; “I will not, I just will not 
stand for a white shirt, except on Sundays. You 
must make Aunt Julia take that in, once for all; or 
else I’ll run away to sea.” 

The old-time laugh came back to Buddie, as he 
made the threat, born of the recollection of a summer 
visit to Aunt Julia, months on months before. 
The laugh began in his eyes and ended in his lips 
and in his round and freckled cheeks; and his 
father, watching, laughed in sympathy. But the 


DADDY 


13 


laugh died quickly out of Daddy’s eyes, and, with 
a swift gesture, Daddy’s face was buried in his 
hands. When he spoke, the resonance had all 
gone away from his voice, as he said slowly, — 

“Oh, son, son! You never will know what you 
are to me, nor what it is for me to leave you, even 
for a little while.” 

Quite unrebuked, Ebenezer slept with his ragged 
head beside Buddie’s on the pillow, that night, his 
frowsy body hugged tight in Buddie’s arms. No 
matter what the pluck, the boyish woe had been 
bound to have its way; and Ebenezer, licking up 
the salt tears as they fell, was sure to tell no tales. 
Strange to say, however, it was not until Buddie was 
just about to fall asleep that suddenly he recollected 
that he had been too much absorbed in the mere 
fact of the separation to think to ask his father 
where it was that he was going. The sudden recol- 
lection almost waked him up again; almost, but 
not quite. 


CHAPTER TWO 


THE NEW HOME 

L IKE many another busy professional man, Doc- 
tor Angell was a notoriously bad correspondent. 
Like him, only a good deal worse, was his half-sister. 
Miss Julia Tenney. Moreover, during her frequent 
absences from home, Miss Julia never took the 
trouble to have her letters sent on after her. Her 
friends that counted, knew her whereabouts, Miss 
Julia argued. The rest of the world did not matter 
in the least. Their letters could be left, piling up on 
her hall table to await her return and her subsequent 
leisurely curiosity as concerned their contents. 

Her return from one such absence had occurred, 
that very afternoon. And now, her letters still un- 
touched, Miss Julia was having tea in her library, 
preparatory to her coming tussle with the contents 
of her trunks. Beside her on a chair, Pet-Lamb was 
having tea with Miss Julia, cambric tea and very 
sweet, with a biscuit crumbled in, tea which be- 
fitted the delicacy of her feline nerves. Pet-Lamb 
was a pure white Persian pussy cat whose charted 
pedigree was kept between the leaves of Miss Julia’s 
own book of genealogy. In her early youth, before 
Miss Julia had adopted her, Pet-Lamb had won 
divers blue ribbons in divers shows, a ribbon, indeed, 
for every show. But Miss Julia had stopped all 
that. Shows were neither aristocratic, nor too 


THE NEW HOME 


15 


cleanly, and there was always the possibility for 
germs. Furthermore, Miss Julia had changed her 
name from Rampur Fourth to Pet-Lamb, Pet-Lamb 
with a hyphen and the accent falling heavily upon 
the latter word. In passing, too, it should be added 
that Pet-Lamb, unlike the mail, as a general thing 
followed Miss Julia Tenney wherever she might go. 

Pet-Lamb was absorbing her tea with stoic greed; 
but Miss Julia dallied with her own, tasting and 
pausing and tasting again. Saint Augustine had 
been delightful, that year, full of good old friends 
and charming new acquaintances. Nevertheless, it 
was very good to be at home once more, to settle 
down in the dear old house with its dainty furnish- 
ings, its luxury and, above all else, its quiet. There 
had been children galore at Saint Augustine, sun- 
burnt babies in rompers and short socks, who wailed 
aloud and beat each other with their fists, and boys 
in dusty boots, who tried experiments on Pet-Lamb’s 
nervous system. At the memory, Miss Julia nestled 
closer into her favourite chair. Then, erect once more, 
she hastily replenished Pet-Lamb’s empty cup. 
Pet-Lamb had a determined, self-assertive nature, 
and it was as well to be in time. 

The fire was snapping cosily. Miss Julia put on 
another stick of fragrant cherry wood, paused to 
rearrange the roses on the table at her side; then, 
seating herself once more, she poured herself another 
cup of tea. Really, it was very good to be at home 
again. By the time Pet-Lamb had finished her re- 
past and settled herself for a nap, Miss Julia had al- 
most forgotten the waiting trunks, in a blissful, 
formless reverie compounded of hazy memories of 
last-night’s sleeper and of yet more hazy plans 


16 BUDDIE 

for the placid weeks which stretched away before 
her. 

A maid broke in upon her bliss, a maid whose 
immaculate cap and collar furnished a crisp setting 
for a countenance quite blank in its surprise. 

“Miss Julia, ma’am?” 

Regretfully Miss Julia pulled herself out of her 
reverie. 

“Yes, Lena.” 

“Miss Julia — Really, I hate to tell you; but 
there ’s a boy outside — ” 

The maid had paused to gather up her courage 
for the last and worst announcement. Before she 
could make it, Miss Julia’s voice had cut athwart 
her pause, an even, quiet voice which was in strange 
contrast to the suppressed excitement of the maid. 

“What does he want, Lena?” 

Lena caught her breath. Then she exploded her 
bomb. 

“You. He says he ’s come to stay.” 

The bomb appeared to have bowled Miss Julia over. 

“To stay?” she echoed feebly, as she set down 
her cup. 

“That’s what he says,” Lena iterated firmly. 
“He came in a carriage, and there’s a trunk on 
back. He asked for you, and I told him you were 
resting and could n’t be disturbed.” 

“What did he say then?” Miss Julia queried, 
still quite feebly, for she felt as one, dabbling in the 
edge of the waves, feels when overtaken by a huge 
and unexpected breaker. She had a vague percep- 
tion that, mentally at least, she was standing on her 
head in the sand. “Tell him he must go away,” 
she added, with sudden energy. 


THE NEW. HOME 


17 


Lena clasped her hands upon her pinafore. 

“Indeed I did, Miss Julia. I told him you had 
just come home, and that you were too tired to see 
anybody at all.” 

“And did n’t he go?” 

Lena shook her head slowly, once from right to 
left, once from left to right. That was all; but the 
extreme deliberation of the gesture seemed to be 
adding untold force to its negation. 

“He’s sitting on the front steps now,” she 
said. 

“What sort of a boy?” Miss Julia inquired tim- 
orously, as a new fear struck her, a fear born of the 
late reports from the court for juvenile offenders. 

“Awful red-headed,” Lena answered tersely. 

“And you told him to go?” 

“I told him you could not see anybody at all.” 

“And what did he say then?” 

“He said no matter. He’d come to live here, and 
there was plenty of time ahead of him so he guessed 
his welcome might as well simmer down a little, 
or else its warmth might burn him up.” It was 
obvious that Lena was quoting literally. 

Miss Julia rose, took a hasty turn up and down 
the room, faced Lena again. 

“What can I do?” she asked helplessly. “To 
live here! Lena, does he look — demented?” 

Lena shook her head. 

“No; not very. If he was crazy, he would n’t be 
so sure of what he wanted. He was going to have 
the driver put his trunk on the verandah; but I 
told the man that, if he laid a finger on the trunk to 
take it down, I’d send in a fire alarm and have the 
hose on him,” she explained valiantly. 


18 


BUDDIE 


“Sometimes they are,” Miss Julia said, a little 
bit irrelevantly, or so it seemed to Lena. 

The maid unclasped her hands and, crossing the 
room, drew back the curtain. Then she beckoned 
to her mistress. 

“You can see him here, if you don’t make too 
much noise about it,” she whispered. 

On the points of her velvet slippers, Miss Julia 
crossed the room and peered out from beneath the 
shelter of Lena’s lifted arm. Just outside the win- 
dow, a public hack stood waiting, its horses hanging 
their heads in drowsy unconcern at the delay, its 
driver lounging sidewise on his seat, watching his 
erstwhile passenger. The erstwhile passenger, mean- 
while, totally regardless of his new clothes donned 
for the journey, was amusing himself by alternately 
“shinning” up the slim verandah pillars and sliding 
down again. At least every other time that he slid 
down, moreover, he lost his balance on the edge of 
the verandah and capsized over into the bed of 
crocuses beneath. From the carriage window, two 
fond gray eyes, set in a vast and tousled head, 
watched him adoringly. 

For the space of full five minutes, Miss Julia 
watched him, too. Seemingly, she was hypnotized 
at the sight: the combination of the waiting horses, 
the energetic boy and the crumpled bed of crocuses. 
Then her eyes fell upon the head framed in the 
carriage window. The other details, albeit unwel- 
come, were yet within her ken. This object tran- 
scended the limits of her past experience. 

“What’s that?” she demanded sharply. 

Lena craned her neck. 

“Saints be good to us!” she ejaculated then, 


THE NEW HOME 19 

with a swift lapse into her native idiom. “I did n’t 
be seeing it before.” 

Miss Julia peered again. She was very short- 
sighted; besides, it was now many months since 
she had beheld her nephew, so it was no especial 
wonder that she did not recognize him in this un- 
expected vision at her portal. 

“Tell him he must go away at once, Lena,” she 
said, with sudden dignity. 

“So I did, ma’am; and that’s all the good there 
was in it.” 

Miss Julia hesitated. Then she made a second 
rallying. 

“Then I shall tell him so, myself,” she announced, 
with a fresh wave of dignity which ebbed, however, 
in her final phrases, “But I think perhaps you’d 
best go to the door with me, Lena.” 

To the door, accordingly, they went: haughty, 
timorous little mistress and frilly, haughty maid. 
At the door, the mistress took the lead, so absorbed 
in the final, impending ruin of her crocus bed as to 
be totally unconscious that Pet-Lamb, ever devoted 
and ever curious, was sauntering along behind 
her. 

“You must go away at once, boy,” Miss Julia 
ordered valiantly at the heels that clasped the post 
above her head. 

With a dizzying swiftness, the heels were replaced 
by a round, snub-nosed boyish face, as their owner 
slid down past Miss Julia’s level, balked at the floor, 
toppled over and landed in a sitting posture in the 
exact middle of the last remaining patch of blossoms. 
Thence he sent up to her astounded ears his word 
of greeting. 


20 


BUDDIE 


“Hullo, Aunt Julia!” he observed nonchalantly. 

Then, for the first time, Miss Julia recognized her 
guest. 

“Ernest Angell!” she exclaimed. 

Without troubling himself to arise, Buddie offered 
protest. 

“Oh, come off there, Aunt Julia! You weren’t 
my spankers in baptism, and Daddy has promised 
that nobody else shall be allowed to call me that, 
till I say the word.” 

“Where is your father?” Miss Julia asked, catch- 
ing at the first safe conversational straw that offered. 
Indeed, it was a little disconcerting to find one’s 
nephew seated in one’s crocus bed, especially when 
the aforesaid nephew was very little better — or 
worse — than a total stranger to her. 

“In town — now.” 

The break in the reply escaped Miss Julia’s ear. 
She was trying too hard to summon back her hospit- 
able instincts, to heed what Buddie said, still less 
what he implied. She tried to speak alertly. 

“And you have come to make me a little visit? 
How—” 

Fortunately for her moral record, Miss Julia was 
spared the necessity for perjuring herself. Pet- 
Lamb, though fat and lazy, by now had appeared 
upon the threshold, where she stood rubbing her 
fluffy flanks against Miss Julia’s skirts. On the in- 
stant of her appearing, there was a sudden stir with- 
in the carriage, a stir which brought Buddie to his 
feet without delay. 

“Hi! Ebenezer! Charge!” he said, in an accent 
which must have shaken the Metropolitan tower, 
a good hundred miles to the westward. 


THE NEW HOME 


21 

And Ebenezer did charge, albeit not exactly in 
the sense which Buddie had intended. The carriage 
door flew open and Ebenezer flew out and then flew 
up the steps. There was a yip and there was a yowl; 
and then two furry, fluffy streaks, the one pure 
white, the other dark, dark grizzle, moved swiftly 
down the hall and vanished through the open door- 
way of the library. A moment later, the crash of 
cups and the clash of spoons announced to the wait- 
ing ears outside that Ebenezer, like Pet-Lamb, was 
taking tea. 

As she left the dinner table, that same night, Miss 
Julia bade Lena to telephone for her masseuse to 
come at bed-time. To that functionary. Miss Julia 
made frank confession that she was feeling curiously 
jaded. Buddie, meanwhile, in the second-best guest 
room, was conscious of no feelings at all save one: 
a great and overwhelming homesickness. He yearned 
for his own room at home, with its strange and un- 
seemly medley of boyish “fixings”; he yearned for 
Ebenezer, shut up in the cellar with nothing but a 
rug to sleep on; most of all, he yearned for Daddy, 
absent in New York and doubtless packing for that 
coming journey. This final yearning grew on Bud- 
die; it would not be downed. Rather, it seemed to 
rise up all about him, to shut him in and fairly stop 
his breath. At last, he could endure the loneliness 
no longer. Rising, he stealthily opened the door of 
his room, and stood there waiting to assure himself 
that the household was fast asleep. Then, softly 
and on his toe-tips, he went down the stairs, through 
the deserted house and down the cellar stairs in 
search of Ebenezer. And Ebenezer, restless with- 
out his master, had also been in search of something: 


BUDDIE 


a rat in the coal cellar close at hand. Buddie took 
no heed of that, however. Instead, gathering the 
great dog in his arms, he lugged him up the cellar 
stairs, through the deserted house and up the stairs to 
his own room where, panting heavily, he deposited 
him in the immaculate white bed. An hour later, 
Buddie, the tears still wet upon his cheeks, had fal- 
len fast asleep, his red head nestled into Ebenezer’s 
shaggy, crocky side. 

Earlier, however, had come the needful explan- 
ations. 

Miss Julia might be haughty, she might even feel 
certain reservations concerning the charms of boy- 
hood. Nevertheless, she was kindly of heart and 
generous withal. On that account, ignoring the dis- 
ordered library, where Ebenezer was gobbling up 
the sugar and the broken biscuits, and where Lena, 
on a chair, was vainly endeavouring to induce Pet- 
Lamb to descend from the top of the tall bookcase: 
ignoring all this, Miss Julia had led the way to a 
room quite on the other side of the house. 

“Come in here, Ernest,” she bade him as cordially 
as she was able. “Sit down, while I tell the maid 
where the man shall put your trunk. So you are 
coming to make me a little visit?” 

Her tone was faultless in its courtesy; but Bud- 
die’s quick ear detected a flaw in its sincerity. His 
doubts concerning Ebenezer’s welcome vanished be- 
hind the reascending doubts which concerned his 
own. 

“Didn’t you get Daddy’s letter?” he demanded 
directly, for it was never Buddie’s habit to delay his 
knowledge of the worst. 

Smiling, Miss Julia shook her head. 


THE NEW HOME 


23 


“Not that it matters,” she added lightly. “Of 
course, I am always glad to have a visit from you.” 

Buddie shut his teeth. Then he blurted out the 
unlovely truth. 

“It is n’t a visit, Aunt Julia. I’m to stay.” 

“Of course, as long as I can keep you. How long 
is your vacation?” 

“But it isn’t a vacation,” Buddie insisted desper- 
ately. “Can’t you catch on to it, Aunt Julia? I’ve 
— Oh, where can Daddy’s letter have gone to? He 
said he’d told you all about it, and all the reason, 
and you’d understand, even if you did n’t answer.” 
The freckled face was scarlet now, and the brown 
eyes looked desperate, appealing. 

“I haven’t opened my letters yet,” Miss Julia 
told him. 

“Yet?” Buddie echoed blankly. 

“Since I came home. I only came up from Saint 
Augustine, to-day,” she explained. 

“And you haven’t had Daddy’s letter yet?” 
There was a world of boyish consternation in the 
slow inquiry. 

“It is probably there in the hall with all the others,” 
Miss Julia told him. 

“Then,” and there came an unaccustomed quaver 
into Buddie’s voice; “then I may as well tell you 
now, myself. Daddy has got to go away. He is n’t 
sure for just how long; but he could n’t take me 
with him. And, Aunt Julia, he’s sent me here to 
live with you, to be your boy, till he comes back 
again. Truly, Aunt Julia, I hope you won’t be 
mad about my coming. I could n’t help myself, 
and Daddy said, once you had his letter, he was sure 
it would be all right.” 


24 


BUDDIE 


Miss Julia rallied swiftly and raised her head to 
speak. Before she could utter a single syllable, how- 
ever, there came the soft padding of feet behind her 
and she turned to look. A great gray dog, tousled 
and shaggy, his creamy whiskers plentifully powdered 
with crumbs of biscuit, had halted at her side and 
was regarding her with friendly hazel eyes, while he 
wagged the tangled tuft of hair which answered for 
a tail. 

“That’s Ebenezer,” Buddie made hasty explan- 
ation. “Daddy said he thought you’d let him stay 
with me. He’s the only relation I’ve got left but 
you.” 

And Ebenezer, hearing his name and believing it 
was his turn to make petition for a welcome, lifted 
himself upon his hind legs, placed his ragged paws 
upon Miss Julia’s silken shoulders and kissed her 
face with creamy, crumby whiskers. 

As Daddy had foretold, it was all right, once Miss 
Julia had read the letter. 

Lena brought it in from the hall, and Miss Julia 
tore it open, read the first dozen lines and pretended 
to read the rest of it. Her eyes, though, were too 
dim to make out a single word, after the first brief 
announcement. She turned the pages one by one, 
however, till she reached the last. Then, folding 
the sheets, she devoted herself to the making Bud- 
die feel at home, until the time came for them both 
to dress for dinner. Miss Julia carried the letter 
with her, when she went away to dress; and her 
eyelids were pink, her eyes unusually bright, when, 
later on, she took her place at the table. Buddie, 
meanwhile, with Ebenezer at his heels, had been 
making a thorough investigation of the resources 


THE NEW HOME 


25 


of his room. It was a pretty room, with windows on 
three sides, for it was in one of the wings of the 
rambling old house. One window opened into an 
apple tree whose branches swept the casement; 
another offered access to a flat tin roof which seemed 
to stretch away indefinitely around the corner 
towards the back of the house. So far, so good. 
The place possessed its strategic advantages for 
later operations. Nevertheless, there was the flimsy, 
spindling furniture to be considered, that and the 
curtains, two sets of them, one white and very tear- 
able, one stouter and of flowered chintz. 

“Apple blossoms, too!” sniffed Buddie. “Girl- 
truck!” 

Ebenezer, meanwhile, had settled himself for a 
nap in the one upholstered chair the room afforded. 
He was not critical, as was his master. Granted the 
softness of the cushions, Ebenezer did not care one 
jot or tittle whether the covering was strewn with 
pinkish apple blossoms, or with black and scamper- 
ing rats. 


CHAPTER THREE 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 

N EXT morning, a full hour before the rising 
bell, Buddie awoke, arose, dressed himself and 
went clattering down the stairs to view the garden 
underneath his window. Ebenezer, wailing lustily, 
balked at the stairs, and Buddie was forced to 
remount and carry him down them in his arms. 
Miss Julia groaned in spirit, as she drew the blankets 
close about her ears to shut out the unaccustomed 
racket. Always, in that well-ordered house, it had 
been a law as of the Medes and Persians that any 
one who violated the sanctity of Miss Julia’s morn- 
ing nap instantly should be dismissed. In the case 
of a servant, Miss Julia never hesitated; but Buddie 
brought her to a halt. She knew, within the depths 
of her New England conscience, that Buddie could 
not be dismissed. 

Miss Julia’s formal garden was one of the show 
places of the community. Laid out by her great- 
grandfather, carefully tended and weeded and 
watered by her grandmother’s loving hands, it 
still kept to the prim old lines of its establishment. 
Walled in with box and privet, its narrow paths 
were weedless, its narrow beds ablaze with all the 
old-time favourites according to their season. In 
one of the back corners, a smoke-tree mingled its 
branches with an overgrown snowball bush; in 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 


27 

the other, a lilac thicket was rioting out across the 
nearer flower beds, and working its way backward 
over the fence and into the dooryard of the house 
beyond. 

Just now, the more distant of the lilac boughs 
were threshing wildly through the air, as though a 
particularly local sort of cyclone was bent upon 
their immediate and complete destruction. Eben- 
ezer pricked up his ears and snuffed the morning 
breeze inquiringly, albeit from a safe distance. 
Buddie, more bold, drew nearer to inspect the 
phenomenon, quite unaware that, while he did so, 
the source of the phenomenon was inspecting him. 

The knowledge came to him by slow degrees. 
At first, he judged himself invisible; for the voice 
that sang or, rather, shouted, forth from the thresh- 
ing lilacs, sounded altogether too detached to come 
from the throat of a critical spectator, even though 
the spectator was obviously a girl, and therefore 
wily. The words were noncommittal. 

“ La la la la la la-a. 

La la la la la la-a, 

La la la la la la-a, 

La la la la-a.” 

she sang, and the voice would not have been un- 
musical, if only one could have divided it by nine 
and then shared the result among a whole quartette. 
However, the rhythm made up for any other lacks, 
and the lilac boughs threshed in unison with the 
theme. 

Then, without warning and with no perceptible 
pause, the theme changed, grew dreary, rhythm- 
less, although the volume of sound remained quite 


28 BUDDIE 

undiminished. This time, moreover, there were 
words. 

“ The rocks can rend, the earth can quake, 

The seas can roar, the mountains shake, 

Of feeling, all things show some sign 
But this unfeeling heart of mine.” 

This was too much for Buddie. He addressed 
Ebenezer a shade too audibly for perfect manners. 

“Jiminy, Ebenezer! She’s got it bad, for 
sure.” 

The response came unexpectedly, punctuated by 
a soft thud, as of two sturdy heels lighting on the 
turf. There was one final convulsion of the lilac 
boughs and then they came to a sudden rest. Bud- 
die, in the succeeding silence, wondered what had 
hit him. The fact was, the words had hit him, 
leaving him breathless by their sheer pugnacity, — 

“I have not got it bad, either; and it is n’t good 
manners to pass remarks on other people.” 

“You need n’t have been listening, then,” Buddie 
suggested curtly. 

“It’s my garden.” 

Buddie grew even more terse than before. 

“Doubt it.” 

“It is, too.” 

“You mean, I suppose, that it belongs to your 
father,” Buddie explained elaborately, becoming 
suddenly suave again. 

The pause assured him that his explanation had 
struck home, leaving his adversary speechless for 
the moment. It was only for the moment, how- 
ever. A moment afterward, she was neither un- 
seen nor speechless. Furthermore, as had hap- 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 29 

pened before, her suddenness left Buddie almost 
speechless in his turn. 

“What a homely old dog that is! Is it yours?” 
she queried abruptly, as she poked her head over 
the fence from a direction wholly unexpected to 
Buddie, and pointed a slim, disdainful finger at 
the almost priceless Ebenezer. 

This was carrying war into the enemy’s camp, 
with a vengeance. Buddie rose to the defence, 
albeit he would have liked to wait a little and study 
the face before him, a merry, mocking face, with 
dimples beside the thin, scarlet lips, and two immense 
yellow pigtails dangling over the straight young 
shoulders. Buddie liked her looks a great deal 
better than he liked her conversation. 

“He isn’t an old dog, and he’s a stunner,” he 
retorted. “Everybody says so, that knows any- 
thing about dogs.” 

There was a pause. Then the dimples deepened. 

“He might be, if his hair was combed,” she made 
meditative answer. “Just at present, he looks 
like a feather bed that’s lost its tick. What’s 
your name, boy?” 

Buddie’s cheeks flamed. He was not used to 
this peremptory style of address, he who had been 
the idol of his home and the cock of his school. 
Once more he felt himself driven to abrupt retort. 

“Wffiat’s yours, girl?” 

She sniffed. 

“Anyhow, you’re a Yankee,” she assured him. 

“I am not,” Buddie contradicted rashly. 

Once again she had the best of him. 

“Really? That’s too bad. I suppose you came 
in by Castle Garden, not by Plymouth Rock, the 


30 


BUDDIE 


way I did. Still, one can’t help one’s family, I 
suppose. Are you visiting Miss Julia?” 

“What do you think about it?” Buddie asked, 
a little bit pugnaciously. 

“I — ” again the dimples; “didn’t know. You 
see, there are n’t any trespass signs, this side of 
the garden. And — ” 

“I’m her nephew,” Buddie told her, with a 
frantic snatch in the direction of his boyish dig- 
nity. 

“Oh. And I’m her next door neighbour.” The 
girl bowed mockingly. “How do you do, boy?” 

“Very well, I thank you, girl.” 

“Are you going to stay here long, boy?” 

Buddie bit his lip. 

“That depends, girl,” he said, loftily. 

Her curiosity became too much for her. 

“On what?” she asked him. 

Then Buddie scored. 

“On my plans,” he told her, still more loftily. 

This time, the silence was of her making. When 
at last she spoke, it was to open up a new lane for 
conversation. 

“Can you climb a fence?” 

“Rather!” 

“Then come over and see my playhouse, boy.” 

“My name is Buddie,” he informed her rashly, 
rashly for it gave her the chance to reassume her 
mantle of superiority. 

“What a queer name!” she said, with frank dis- 
approval. “It sounds like a nickname.” 

“So it is.” Buddie once more grew curt. 

“For what?” 

“Ernest.” Lying was outside of Buddie’s code 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 31 

of honour; therefore he shut his teeth and con- 
fessed to his unlovely heritage of baptism. 

“Ernest,” she repeated. “That isn’t so very 
bad. What else?” 

Buddie faltered. Then he yielded to the inevit- 
able. 

“Angell,” he told her briefly. 

He saw it coming in advance, yet he had no 
suspicion of the violence of the mirth which was 
about to overwhelm her. For one instant, she 
struggled against it. Then she gave in, and laughed 
till her cheeks were scarlet, till the tears hung on 
the ends of her long brown lashes. 

“Ernest Angell!” she gasped, when she could 
speak again. “Er-nest Angell! Well, I must say 
you neither look the part nor act it. The angels I 
know about are slender, with floating raven hair, 
and the most perfect manners I ever saw. But — 
Ernest Angell!” 

“I tell you they call me Buddie,” poor Buddie 
protested wrathfully. 

Instantly she sobered and stuck out her hand in 
token of her penitence. 

“Honestly, I did n’t mean to make you mad,” 
she told him, in a hearty, downright fashion which 
went far to make Buddie forgetful of her previous 
sparring. “Of course, such a name must be rather 
awful to carry around. I know, because my middle 
name is Rosalie, just for all the world like a Paris 
doll. I’d pull the hair of any girl who called me 
by it.” 

Buddie’s fist shut over hers. Only her pluck 
kept her from crying out at the pressure. 

“Ditto!” he said. “I did lick one fellow, too. 


32 


BUDDIE 


licked him till he lisped for more than a week. In 
a case like that, it’s the mouth you want to thrash; 
the hair has n’t anything to do with it.” 

She bowed before his logic. Then she asked him, — 

“ Did he stop it, after? ” 

Buddie smiled sedately at the recollection. 

“Bet you! But so did I. Daddy never would 
stand for fighting, and that was my last chance.” 

“What did he do to you?” the girl asked, with 
sudden curiosity. “Did he whip you?” 

Buddie’s tone became disdainful. 

“Daddy never whips,” he answered. “He just 
says things, and then you know just exactly what 
an ass he thinks you’ve been.” 

Something in Buddie’s voice warned the girl that 
she was treading upon dangerous ground. Once 
more she changed the subject. 

“I am Teresa Hamilton,” she volunteered. “I 
live here, next door, so we may as well get acquainted, 
first as last, for my mother knows Miss Julia per- 
fectly well.” 

“Teresa. And I suppose they call you Tessa,” 
Buddie observed a little tritely. 

Her answer came upon the instant, albeit with 
an accent which removed it far from the domains 
of slang. 

“Not if I know it!” she said. “It’s got to be 
Teresa, or else keep still. I don’t like nicknames. 
Still,” the laugh came back into her eyes; “I admit 
that, in your case, there’s some excuse. However, 
I sha’n’t call you Buddie.” 

“Why not?” 

“I think it’s very silly. It doesn’t mean any- 
thing at all.” 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 


33 


Buddie once more grew rash. 

“It does. It means brother.” 

“Brother to what? How many are there of you?” 
she demanded. 

Buddie’s reply was terse. 

“Just me.” 

“I knew it.” The yellow pigtails bobbed with 
the vigour of her nod. “Nobody but an only child 
would be so — ” 

“So what?” 

But she was not to be caught. 

“Come along and see my playhouse,” she com- 
manded. 

Buddie demurred. 

“It’s almost time for breakfast,” he objected. 

“No; it is n’t. Miss Julia is always late; break- 
fast won’t be ready for hours and hours and hours, 
and it won’t be much but bacon, then. You ’d 
better come. Besides, your dog is digging up Miss 
Julia’s flowers.” 

Buddie turned his head in hot haste. It had 
been agreed, the night before, that Ebenezer’s 
status in the family circle depended upon Ebenezer’s 
good behaviour, and now Ebenezer was pursuing a 
totally imaginary mole through the sub-soil of Miss 
Julia’s bed of white narcissus. Half an hour be- 
fore, the noses of the fat green buds had been pok- 
ing up through the soil, forerunners of the earliest 
of the garden blossoms. Now, thanks to Ebenezer’s 
industry, the bulbs themselves were poking up, and 
the fat green buds were yawning in flat impotence 
among them. It was ominously plain to Ebenezer’s 
master that, for this one season, the narcissus bed 
must yield its customary precedence in the flowery 


34 


BUDDIE 


procession of Miss Julia’s garden. And, moreover, 
the garden was so formal, Ebenezer’s gardening, 
so very, very lacking in formality. 

Any digression, therefore, would have been a 
welcome one to Buddie, who would have scorned 
to show the consternation that he really felt. Ac- 
cordingly, seizing the miry Ebenezer by the collar, 
he bundled him through a convenient gap in the 
fence and was preparing to follow, when Teresa’s 
voice brought him to a sudden halt. 

“I hadn’t invited the dog,” she remarked at 
nothing in particular. 

This time Buddie dominated the situation, as 
became a man. 

“No; but I had. Either he goes, or I stay. 
I’m not going to leave him to be walloped, when 
I’m not here.” 

“We-el,” she yielded. 

Buddie chirruped, and Ebenezer gave an ecstatic 
bounce of comprehension, before he fell back into 
a sedate jog , jog , close at the heels of his young 
master. 

No boy brought up inside the limits of a city, no 
boy accustomed to brick walls and asphalt streets, 
could have failed to rejoice in the sight that met 
the eyes of Buddie, once he was over the fence that 
divided Miss Julia’s formal garden from the great 
side yard beyond. True, the side yard belonged 
to a rather small red house which obviously had 
seen its better days a good while before this present 
hour. But the windows of the house were wide 
open to the morning sun; the sprawling verandahs 
were already strung with brilliant-hued hammocks, 
and a mysterious network of cords extending from 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 


35 


the upper windows suggested everything from flags 
to telegraphs. A hive of bees stood near the back 
door; a procession of fuzzy ducklings sauntered 
down the path towards a distant fissure in the turf, 
which could mean nothing in the world but a brook; 
and a pen of rabbits occupied a distant corner be- 
hind a rambling concoction of barn and woodshed 
and grape arbour, all curiously intermingled. Eben- 
ezer’s eyes were on the line of ducklings; but Buddie’s 
had roved on towards the grassy reaches far beyond 
the barn, reaches where the turf grew thick and lush 
beneath the spreading branches of the apple trees, 
where the brook chuckled and purred its pleasure 
in the April day, where, dimly seen at the very 
farther end and half-hidden by the sheltering tree- 
trunks, a little house, fit for a doll or for a fairy 
princess, a house with real glass windows and a 
door and a usable brick chimney, awaited his com- 
ing and his subsequent approval. 

Teresa’s eyes followed the direction of his glance. 

“That’s it,” she told him briefly. 

Buddie’s approval found vent in a single 
word. 

“Bully!” he said. And then he added, “And it’s 
yours?” 

She nodded. 

“My very own. My father had it built for me, 
when I was quite a little girl.” Her tone suggested 
that she now was senile. “You see, I’m the only 
girl, with lots and lots of brothers, and sometimes 
I seem to get rather crowded out, they tease so and 
make such hay of all my things. My father said 
it was n’t fair. If the house could n’t hold me, 
I should have one that could. So he had this one 


36 


BUDDIE 


built, and he gave me the key, and the boys can’t 
come here, except when I invite them. Generally 
they are pretty good about it, only they do climb 
on the roof and sing songs and throw things down 
the chimney, when they know I am going to do 
some thinking,” she added meditatively. 

The fun flashed into Buddie’s eyes. 

“Do you do it often?” he inquired. 

As if in answer, her dimples showed themselves. 

“Not as often as I should, if there weren’t nine 
of them,” she admitted. 

“Nine! Jiminy!” Buddie ejaculated. 

“Yes, nine.” She appeared to think it was her 
arithmetic that he called into question. “There’s 
Eric, and Sandy, and Paul,” she counted on her 
fingers; “and Billy, and Jack, and Horace, and 
Bertie, and Duncan, and little Tootles.” 

“Little Tootles?” Buddie began to think that 
there might be some other people afflicted in the 
matter of their names. 

“Yes, for the present. You see, we’ve only had 
him a few months, and we have n’t been able to 
think up any good name for him,” Teresa explained. 
“The other boys seem to have used up all the best 
ones, and there’s not much left for poor little 
Tootles.” 

“No; I should imagine not,” Buddie assented. 
Then, from the standpoint of his only-child-hood, 
he added, rather to himself, “Imagine having nine 
brothers, anyhow!” 

“It is n’t so bad,” Teresa said defensively. “That 
is, not when they behave themselves. The worst 
of it is, that happens so very seldom. It takes an 
awful lot of good behaviour to go around so many 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 37 

boys, even when they mean to be — ” she hesitated; 
then her dimples came again; “earnest angels.” 

“Stow that!” Buddie ordered, with uncouth 
abruptness. 

For an instant, she eyed him cornerwise. Then, 
aware that he meant what he said, she dropped her 
teasing. 

“Eric is the oldest,” she added nonchalantly. 
“He’s almost fourteen.” 

“How old are you?” Buddie demanded flatly. 

“Fifteen years and two months and ten days,” 
came the glib answer. “I always keep track of it, 
because I meant to have been born on Washington’s 
Birthday and be named Georgianna, and I never 
really got over the disappointment. But come 
along and see my house.” 

Ebenezer came along, too, and lined up on the 
threshold to peer in. Buddie’s judgment of the house 
was delayed a little by the discovery that Ebenezer 
was carrying one of the ducklings in his mouth, a 
duckling which had lost its fluffiness by reason of 
much sucking. Ordinarily, Buddie was the soul of 
downrightness. Nevertheless, he judged it better 
to remove the duckling when Teresa’s eyes were 
not upon the dog. No need to hasten the hour 
of the inevitable recriminations. Therefore, while 
Teresa was unlocking the front door, Buddie pried 
open Ebenezer ’s jaws, craftily abstracted the now 
soggy duckling and, lacking other tomb for it, pop- 
ped it into the side pocket of his coat. That done, 
he followed Teresa across the threshold of the house. 

Viewed close at hand, the house appeared to Bud- 
die to be a veritable gem. Shingled in dark, dark 
green from foundation stone to ridgepole, scarce 


38 


BUDDIE 


nine feet above the ground, it not only had a usable 
chimney, but an angular bay window as well. With- 
in, there were two rooms, a living-room furnished in 
chintz and wicker, and a kitchen equipped with a 
small range and an infinity of pots and pans. Beside 
the kitchen hearthstone sat a venerable doll, her 
face mottled with age, her kid arms dangling at 
her side in an attitude of limpest resignation. 

“That’s Rosa,” Teresa introduced him. 

There came a disparaging cadence into Buddie’s 
voice. 

“Do you play dolls?” 

“No; I don’t,” Teresa told him flatly. “I’ve 
put away all the others; but I can’t get on without 
old Rosa yet. I tell her things, and whip her when 
people get too cranky.” 

Buddie’s hand closed on Ebenezer’s topmost tag- 
lock, and he nodded. 

“Same here; only I never hit him. I couldn’t 
do that; but I suppose dolls don’t care. How they 
do understand things, though!” 

And, in the momentary silence that came after, 
was born a friendship which was destined to outlast 
many and many a passing year. 

Teresa broke the silence, her voice a little shaky. 

“The stove is n’t for looks, by any means,” she 
observed. “One of the conditions of my having the 
house was that, every single Saturday that I’m at 
home, I am to ask at least four of the family to a 
meal I’ve cooked all by myself. I can choose the 
four, and choose the meal.” 

“I should think you’d always make it breakfast,” 
Buddie advised her. “It’s easy to get, and soonest 
over.” 


THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 39 

She eyed him disdainfully from the height of her 
experience. 

“That’s all you know about having brothers,” 
she said scornfully. “No boy ever was on time at 
any breakfast, and I can’t have the work dragging 
along, all day.” 

Buddie’s smile was cajoling. 

“You have n’t tried me yet,” he said suggestively. " 

Nevertheless, Miss Julia’s breakfast was getting 
rather cold, when Buddie finally bethought himself 
that he was hungry. However, Miss Julia reflected 
that this was only the first morning, and very likely — 

“Good morning, Ernest,” she said, while, forget- 
ful of her shattered morning nap and of her dried-up 
cereal, she bent her face forward to him ever so 
slightly. 

But Buddie, used to the prevailing lack of caresses 
in his father’s masculine environment, remained 
uncompromisingly erect. 

“Morning, Aunt Julia,” he responded briefly. 
“Sorry to be late. Who’s the girl, next door?” 


CHAPTER FOUR 


buddie’s new school 

I T was on the second Friday of the Easter holidays 
that Buddie and Ebenezer had made their tur- 
bulent appearance beneath Miss Julia’s orderly roof. 
On the Monday after, Buddie had marched away 
to school. Miss Julia, tender-hearted and very con- 
scientious in her attitude towards her uninvited 
guest, would fain have coddled him a little longer; 
but Daddy, wise as always, had laid down the law: 
school on Monday morning. He was only too well 
aware that out of idleness is born homesickness, and 
domestic friction, and all the other ills and mis- 
chiefs to which boyish flesh is heir. Therefore, 
gloomy of brow and reluctant, Buddie set out for 
school on Monday morning. 

Eric was to be his guide and sponsor. Teresa 
had ordained that, for already she had taken on 
herself the responsibility of ordaining the details 
of Buddie’s plans. 

“Of course, I shall be there, too,” she argued; 
“but it would set you down as a Miss Nancy for 
evermore, if you appeared at school, tied to my 
apron string. Eric is steady as the church, and yet 
the boys all like him, he knows so much about elec- 
tricity and worms and things. He’ll get you started, 
all right.” 

And get him started Eric did, wisely and well, 


BUDDIE’S NEW SCHOOL 41 

although his wisdom was not precisely of the sort 
that Buddie would have chosen for his own. 

Neither was the school, for that matter. Buddie 
had stepped straight out of kindergarten into a 
school which specialized in fitting boys for Lawrence- 
ville and Andover, a school with a waiting list and 
with two ex-presidents among its trustees. And 
Buddie, more even from personal prowess than 
paternal pull, had been the acknowledged cock of 
the school, just as he had been the lordlet of his 
kindergarten, whence he had emerged at the end 
of his first day, proclaiming loudly, — 

“I’ve had a beautiful time, Daddy. I pulled 
short hair and I pulled long, and they every one of 
them howled.” 

But this school was altogether different, so differ- 
ent that Buddie, looking it over with bored and 
critical eyes, questioned whether he would ever 
stoop to care to become its magnate. There were 
girls in this school, fully as many girls as boys, and 
some of the girls chewed gum. To Buddie, broad- 
minded in his standards as is any healthy boy, that 
pastime marked the social limit which he could 
never bring himself to pass. Humanity, indeed, 
he divided into two great classes: people who used 
chewing gum, and nice people who did not. Chew- 
ing was a bovine habit, not for humans like himself. 

Buddie swept his eyes carelessly across the ranks 
of girls, pig-tailed and frilled and more or less self- 
conscious underneath his glance. He exchanged a 
hearty nod with Teresa, who returned it with inter- 
est and widened her mouth in some silent salutation 
which Buddie was unable to interpret. Then his 
glance swept onward to take in the boys. 


42 


BUDDIE 


At the request of Miss Julia, Eric had been as- 
signed to Buddie for a seat-mate; but Buddie, even 
in that one short walk together, had made up his 
mind that the combination should be as short- 
lived as he possibly could make it. Eric had con- 
versed learnedly about such interesting things as 
henhawks and wireless telegraphy; he even had 
confessed to a half-built airship in the barn. Still, 
his sandy hair showed the comb-marks, and, worse, 
it curled forward from behind the ears. Moreover, 
before he entered the schoolroom, he halted, stand- 
ing first on one leg, then the other, while he dusted 
off his shoes upon the calves of his black stockings. 
No; taken all in all, Buddie was conscious of doubts 
concerning Eric. 

Sandy, the next Hamilton in line, was also in the 
schoolroom. He seemed to Buddie to be all that his 
name implied, a jolly, snub-nosed little urchin who 
appeared to be related to the sunbeams that came 
beating through the southern windows of the school- 
room to rest upon his flaxen head. Restless as a 
jumping jack, always ready for the giggle that ought 
by good rights to have been suppressed behind a 
decorous hand, his yellow hair rampant and tousled 
and his blue eyes gleaming with mischief, Sandy 
was far more attractive to the mind and heart of 
Buddie than was the decorous and intellectual Eric. 

Sandy had been away on a vacation visit to his 
grandmother, who alternately deplored and adored 
him. On that account, Buddie had not seen him 
until just after school was called to order, that morn- 
ing. By reason of the family likeness to Teresa, he 
had decided that Sandy must be of the clan. The 
question which he put to Eric, however, had been 


BUDDIE’S NEW SCHOOL 


43 


stolidly ignored. Instead, Eric had dug into his 
desk and exhumed a Testament with a pink satin 
marker; and Buddie had been driven to seek in- 
formation from Teresa who, even from a distance, 
kept a wary eye upon her new-found friend. Bud- 
die’s school life had made him past master in the 
art of dumb show; and he found Teresa a close 
second. Her reply brought to him the information 
he had sought; but it also brought to her a swift 
rebuke from the powers upon the platform, and 
Teresa, unabashed, but quieted, was forced to bury 
her nose in the allotted morning psalm. 

Recess brought confirmation of Sandy’s identity. 

“Hullo!” he observed, sweeping down on Buddie 
as soon as the line was broken up, and conversation 
was in order. “I’m Sandy, brother of that Eric- 
Thing you’re sitting with. How many extras have 
you got in your knife? My grandmother has given 
me a beauty new one, with four blades and a lot 
more other fixings. Want to see?” 

As a matter of course, Buddie did want to see, 
and the two of them strolled off together, while 
Teresa, from the girls’ side of the yard, stared after 
them with contented eyes. The cause of her con- 
tentment transpired later when, recess over, Buddie 
and Sandy came strolling backward from the corner 
where they had been industriously getting acquainted. 
That the process had been one of mutual satisfac- 
tion, their combined manner left no room for doubt. 

“You see,” Sandy told him, as they prepared to 
fall into line once more; “I didn’t get home till 
the others had started off for school. Teresa sent 
a note across to me, though, while She,” She was the 
teacher, not Teresa; “was finding the place for read- 


44 


BUDDIE 


ing round. She told me you’d come to live at Miss 
Julia’s, and had a dog, and were as spunky as she 
is, even if you did have to sit with Eric. Not that 
Eric is so bad, you know,” he added, with belated 
loyalty. “It’s only, I suppose, because he’s got 
the thing the minister calls a poet’s soul.” 

Buddie, who had times of being exceedingly 
literal-minded, turned to gaze on Eric with awed 
eyes. 

“Does Eric write poems?” he inquired. 

Sandy chuckled. 

“Not on your life! He only moons and maunders 
now and then. Now and then, though, he is as 
healthy a kid as you can find.” 

And then the leaders of the line went tramping up 
the stairs, and Buddie and Sandy, perforce, were 
parted and fell in behind them. 

That morning was a season of triumph for Bud- 
die. He had been well trained, well taught, and he 
was undeniably bright. Moreover, he was totally 
lacking in all forms of self-consciousness. That 
had been Daddy’s doing, Daddy who had accus- 
tomed him to do the thing most obviously right at 
the moment, and then, if it proved to have been 
wrong after all, to shut his teeth and take the con- 
sequences and then forget them utterly, save in so 
far as they concerned his choice of right, the next 
time. Accordingly, it never once occurred to Bud- 
die that, as the new boy in the school, he was the 
centre of every one’s attention. Instead, with neither 
fussiness nor pertness, he did what he was told with 
perfect unconcern, and showed himself just as he 
was, a bright young sinner who had within himself 
the making of a saint. And the teacher liked him 


BUDDIE’S NEW SCHOOL 45 

from the start; and, what was a good deal more to 
the purpose, so did all the other pupils. 

It was a contented Buddie, then, who went strol- 
ling home at noon with Sandy on the one side, Teresa 
on the other. To be sure, his contentment had been 
a little marred by the discovery that this school 
“kept” in the afternoons. However, the almost 
simultaneous discovery of banana fritters for lunch- 
eon, lots and lots of fritters, as many as he could 
eat: this discovery had gone far towards the 
annulling of the other. Besides, from all accounts, 
Ebenezer had been angelically discreet, all morning. 
Besides again, he wished to see more, much more, 
of Sandy, who had invited him over to compare 
stamp books, that very night. And Teresa, coming 
home, had hinted that Buddie might possibly be 
included in her next Saturday dinner party. Not- 
withstanding the attention demanded by the fritters, 
Buddie’s tongue made record speed, throughout the 
luncheon; and it was in a mood of serene, well-filled 
contentment that Buddie ran whistling down the 
steps on his way back to school. 

But, unhappily, that afternoon brought the un- 
doing of Buddie’s full contentment, brought, too, 
a temporary coldness into his relations with Teresa 
and wrecked his chances of a dinner invitation for 
many Saturdays to come. To understand the situ- 
ation to the full, it should be mentioned that Bud- 
die and Teresa and a dozen others made up the top 
division of the upper class, and that the afternoon 
ended with spelling dictation to this division who 
were stationed at the blackboards. Moreover, it 
was not altogether by chance that Buddie found 
himself at the board with Teresa, 


46 


BUDDIE 


It had been upon a Friday that Buddie had come 
to Miss Julia’s house; it had been upon the Saturday 
morning that Buddie had made the acquaintance of 
Teresa, and, as a natural consequence, his Sunday 
clothes had intervened since then. Furthermore, 
Buddie’s memory was most inconveniently short. 
Hence his undoing. 

In the dictation exercise, Teresa wrote rapidly and 
tidily; but Buddie excelled her in speed, if not in 
tidiness. At last, however, even he shook his red 
head over a fearsome scrawl and looked about for 
the eraser. But there was only one eraser for the 
board, and Teresa was using it, just then. Buddie’s 
chivalry overcame his neatness. He dived into his 
side pocket for the handkerchief which he recollected 
only in seasons of great stress, dived, seized a corner 
and jerked it out with a flourish. Something else 
came out, too, a dark and sodden something that 
hurtled through the air and struck Teresa full on 
the back of her unoccupied and dangling hand. 
Teresa glanced down. Then she became the colour 
of a well-cooked beet. 

“Oh — h — h!” she said, a thought too loudly 
for the rulings of the schoolroom. Then, turning 
upon Buddie, she smote his ribs with the eraser; 
not in play, however, but in lusty earnest. 

“Teresa!” Ominously calm sounded the voice 
from the platform. 

As if determined to get in all the iniquity possible 
before the inevitable day of reckoning, Teresa smote 
Buddie once again. 

“It’s my duck,” she said hotly; “my dear little 
dead duck. I missed him, and I never knew where 
he was gone.” 


BUDDIE’S NEW SCHOOL 47 

It was small wonder that Teacher looked a trifle 
mystified. 

“Your — duck, Teresa? But where did it come 
from?” 

Teresa sniffed too audibly and too ostentatiously 
for perfect manners. Then, — 

“That horrid boy had it in his pocket,” she made 
testy answer. 

“What boy?” 

“Ernest Angell.” Impossible to set down in ink 
the accent which Teresa contrived to throw upon 
the name! The school suppressed its mirth as best 
it could, while Buddie, beet-red in his turn, made 
wrathful whisper, — 

“Shut up!” 

Again the ominously calm voice sounded from 
the platform. 

“Ernest!” 

Buddie subsided into angry silence, pondering, 
the while, upon the injustice which ordained that 
a fellow must stand impertinence from Teacher and 
not talk back. If she had only been a man! His 
fists doubled, within his sheltering pockets. But — 

“Ask him where he got my duck!” Teresa was 
demanding shrilly. 

Much against her will, Teacher put the question. 
Long experience had taught her the inadvisability 
of holding court of inquiry before the assembled 
school. 

“I did n’t get him,” Buddie responded curtly and 
with a strong accent on the pronoun. “ I did n’t want 
her fuzzy old duck for anything. Ebenezer got him 
and sucked him till he was n’t good for much, and 
I took him away from Ebenezer when she was n’t 


48 


BUDDIE 


looking, and put him in my pocket. Girls do make 
such an awful row about trifles,” Buddie added 
loftily; “and I did n’t want her to be taking it out 
on Ebenezer.” 

Teacher yielded to her curiosity. 

“Who is Ebenezer?” she queried. 

Buddie’s wrath vanished before his pride, as van- 
ishes a puff of smoke before the morning breeze. 

“Ebenezer? He’s my dog. He’s a thoroughbred 
old English sheep dog with a natural bob tail, and 
his mother took first prize in ” 

“That will do,” said Teacher. 

Nevertheless, Buddie, looking straight into her 
eyes, saw a twinkle there and felt that he had scored. 
He communicated this belief to Teresa, a little later 
on, by means of the artificial widening of his mouth 
and eyelids with the assistance of his thumbs and 
little fingers. His life in the boys’ school had left 
Buddie strangely ignorant of the arts of juvenile 
flirtation. 

Arm in arm with another girl and ostentatiously 
aloof from Buddie and his mates, Teresa chattered 
and laughed incessantly, on her way home from 
school, that night. On that account, Buddie judged 
it the part of dignity to cancel his engagement with 
Sandy, for the evening. Instead, he spent the even- 
ing lying on the rug before the fire, with Ebenezer’s 
shaggy head pillowed upon his chest. Buddie, 
pondering the events of the day, pulled Ebenezer’s 
ears in token of affection. That was the best thing 
about Ebenezer; he was always loyal, always the 
comprehending chum. He was better than all the 
soggy ducks and all the yellow-pigtailed girls in all 
creation. He never got a fellow into scrapes, nor 


BUDDIE’S NEW SCHOOL 


49 


batted him about the ribs with an eraser. Neither 
did his hair show lanky tooth-marks, nor curl flatly 
forward from behind the ears. Rather not! And, 
some day, he would go to school and be shown off 
to Teacher. She looked as if she would know enough 
to recognize a good dog, when she saw one. Any- 
how — 

“Well, Ernest?” Quite silently Miss Julia had 
entered the room from the parlour where she had 
been entertaining a late guest. 

Buddie gritted his teeth. He longed to rebel, yet 
dared not. He loathed the name; but Aunt Julia 
had been wonderfully good to him, wonderfully 
clever in finding out the caprices of his appetite, 
wonderfully silent concerning the misdeeds of Eben- 
ezer. Buddie longed to rebel; but he decided that 
he would better temporize. Aunt Julia was his 
hostess; moreover, she looked too little and far, far 
too dainty to make the fight a fair one. 

“Has it been a good day?” Miss Julia added, as 
she turned to draw up a chair. 

Instantly, and to the manifest surprise of Ebenezer, 
Buddie was on his feet. Later, he wondered at the 
swiftness of the action. It might have broken Eben- 
ezer’s faithful neck. And yet, Miss Julia ought n’t 
to be hauling heavy chairs about the room. When 
they were once more settled, Miss Julia in the 
chair and Buddie on the rug, this time with Eben- 
ezer for the pillow, he answered her question. 

“It might have been worse,” he told her temper- 
ately; and then, without the slightest previous 
intention, he went on and told her all about the 
duckling. 

Miss Julia understood. That was the strange 


50 


BUDDIE 


thing about Miss Julia, Buddie had already learned. 
Despite her immaculate and uncomprehending ap- 
pearance, Miss Julia generally did understand. 
Perhaps she took out her half-sistership to Daddy 
along that line. Anyway, the likeness ended there, 
there and in her curious trick of eliciting unasked- 
for confidences. 

“Poor Teresa, and poor you!” she said now, 
when Buddie had finished his narration. Then 
she laughed a little. “Perhaps I ought to say 
4 Poor Miss Peters,’ too. It is n’t generally custom- 
ary to have dead little ducks come flying round the 
schoolroom.” 

“He didn’t fly,” Buddie corrected her. “He 
just flumped.” 

“Did you see anything of Sandy?” Miss Julia 
asked, a little hastily. 

“Yes, all I could. He’s a corker,” Buddie made 
enthusiastic reply. 

“Ernest,” Miss Julia bent forward, resting her 
hands on her knee and looking down with kindly, 
merry eyes upon the boy who sprawled at her feet; 
“I am not quite sure; but I rather think that may 
be slang.” 

Instantly Buddie retreated into his shell. Now 
he was in for it, he told himself. Miss Julia had been 
pretty decent up to now; but now she was going to 
begin to preach. Well, he would take it as it came. 

Instead, though, — 

“I can’t make many rules for you,” she told him 
lightly. “Still, I am going to ask a favour, and I 
hope you’ll feel that it’s a fair one. Use your 
slang, if you must, when you’re out with the boys; 
but please leave it there. When you’re here in 


BUDDIE'S NEW SCHOOL 51 

the house with me, I’m going to ask you if you 
please won’t talk in English, not in slang.’’ 

Strange to say, Buddie felt no rebuke in her 
words. His boyish sense of justice showed him 
the fairness of her request, and, with characteristic 
frankness, he promptly came out of his shell again 
and told her so. 

“And now about the Hamiltons,” Miss Julia 
said, when Buddie had settled back again once 
more. “I am sorry about the duck, because I 
would like to see you friends with them.” 

“With Eric?” Buddie suggested, with a giggle. 

“Ye-es, with Eric. But I really was thinking 
more about Sandy, and, still more, about Teresa.” 

“She’s a girl,” Buddie objected, with an effort at 
a disdain which, in reality, he was far from feeling. 

“What of that?” Miss Julia asked him quickly. 
“Besides, she has spent all her life with boys, and 
knows them better than she does girls.” 

“What makes you want me to know her, though?” 
Buddie demanded, a little bit suspiciously. 

“Because, for all her swarm of brothers, I some- 
times fancy that the girl is lonely. Because I have 
known the Hamiltons always, known what really 
nice people they are. They live in a little house; 
they have n’t much money, and Mr. Hamilton 
works with his hands, not his head. But, after all, 
those things don’t count for much beside the rest 
of it. Teresa is a splendid girl. In fact,” Miss 
Julia leaned back in her chair and spoke thought- 
fully; “I’ve often felt, if I were going to have 
a child of my own, I’d like it if she were another 
Teresa Hamilton.” 

Had Buddie been a little older and a little bit 


52 


BUDDIE 


more cynical, he might have said things about 
placid doves and brilliant, saucy, chattering blue 
jays. Instead, he lay and contemplated Miss Julia 
with thoughtful and approving eyes. 

“Would an old maid like you care about chil- 
dren?” he inquired at length. 

Miss Julia flushed at the phrasing of the ques- 
tion. Buddie had not meant to be impertinent; 
nevertheless, Miss Julia found it in her heart to 
wish he had not popped her into so unlovely a 
pigeon-hole, nor labelled her so uncompromisingly. 
To be sure, she was thirty-one; and, in a strong 
light, a few little thread-like wrinkles spread from 
the outer corners of her eyes. Still, no one had ever 
called her — Miss Julia sighed a little. Then, — 

“Yes, Ernest, under some conditions,” she said 
gently. 

Buddie pondered. As the upshot of his ponder- 
ings, he lifted up his voice. 

“Then,” he suggested, with a casualness which 
was by no means genuine; “then why don’t you 
count me in, while I stay here, Aunt Julia?” 

However, only an instant later, Buddie was over- 
whelmed with a swift wave of self-rebuke. He had 
meant what he said, meant it most sincerely. And 
yet, was it quite loyal in spirit to his attitude to 
absent Daddy? 

Buddie, stretched out between the linen sheets, 
that night, lay awake and considered many things. 
For the first time in his experience, life had come to 
seem to him unduly complex; henceforward, he 
would be forced to weigh and measure all manner 
of conflicting loyalties, to weigh and measure them, 
and to decide between their claims. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 

“ A UNT JULIA!” Buddie’s accent was despair- 
TY in g. “Can you help a fellow, just a minute?” 

Miss Julia laid down her morning paper, with a 
little sigh. Heretofore, it had been ordained that 
upon no account was she to be interrupted in her 
daily reading of The Times. 

“Where are you, Ernest?” 

“In the hall. I’m awful sorry to trouble you; but 
— I can’t seem to manage this fellow all alone.” 
During the slight break in his words, Buddie paused 
to puff heavily. 

Miss Julia appeared in the doorway of the library. 

“What is it, Ernest?” she inquired, for, to her 
eye, nothing seemed especially amiss either with 
Ebenezer, peering jovially down upon her from 
the stair-top, or with Buddie, kneeling a step or 
two below him. 

“It’s Ebenezer. I’ve got to teach him to come 
downstairs alone,” Buddie said worriedly. “He’s 
been here a week now, and it’s time he learned it, 
if he’s ever going to. Besides, it’s Saturday, and 
I can give the morning to it.” 

Miss Julia looked as if she distrusted her ears. 

“Learn what?” she questioned. 

“Learn to come downstairs.” 

“But how does he come, then?” Miss Julia queried 


54 


BUDDIE 


lucidly, for she was only too well aware that Eben- 
ezer was by no means always at the same level. 
Indeed, if a dog ever deserved to be called peri- 
patetic, that dog was Ebenezer. 

“In my arms. I have to carry him,” Buddie 
explained, a little wearily. 

“That great moose! Ernest, you shouldn’t! 
Make him come down alone,” Miss Julia protested, 
for Ebenezer was burly and very, very solid. 

“But he won’t.” 

“Then leave him down,” Miss Julia advised. 

“He won’t stay. You see, first day he was here, 
I poked and pushed him up the stairs, three or 
four times running. As soon as he learned the 
trick, he thought it was good fun, and now he scuds 
upstairs, the minute I take my eye off from him.” 

“Then let him scud down again,” Miss Julia 
said, a trifle callously. 

Two pairs of reproachful eyes looked down upon 
Miss Julia in grave rebuke: Buddie’s, Ebenezer’s. 
It was Buddie, though, who gave tongue to the 
rebuke. 

“Oh, Aunt Julia! When he doesn’t know how? 
What if he fell?” 

There was an instant’s silence, while Miss Julia 
digested the rebuke. Meanwhile, she stared up at 
Ebenezer whose fat, tousled carcase appeared to be 
the one exception which proved the primary law of 
gravitation, the rule that what goes up must of 
necessity come down. Ebenezer stared back again, 
his tongue lolling out, as if in derision at the limits 
of her comprehension, his long, soft ears falling 
forward to frame his cheeks with ringlets suggestive 
of a poetess of the early ’fifties. 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 


55 


“Nonsense, Ernest!” Miss Julia said at length. 
“Of course, he’s only obstinate. He can’t help 
knowing how.” 

Buddie faced about, and sat down to argue the 
matter at his ease. 

“How should he know? He never saw a stair 
in his life till he came here, except front steps. He 
was born in a kennel flat on the ground, and he’s 
always lived in an apartment with a lift. I don’t 
see how he could be expected to know a flight of 
stairs from a — a — a rainbow,” Buddie concluded, 
in one grand rhetorical outburst. 

“Have you tried to coax him with a little milk?” 
Miss Julia suggested mildly. 

Buddie surveyed her with the exasperation born 
of such belated suggestions. 

“Milk! Quarts!” he told her. “And bones, too, 
and even big pieces of meat. The cook just loves 
Ebenezer, you know,” he added hurriedly. “She 
gives him all the scraps she used to put into the 
pig-pail — ” 

To say that Miss Julia bristled would but faintly 
express the change that came upon her. 

“Pig-pail! Ernest!” she remonstrated, and her 
voice was thick with exclamation points of horror. 
“I don’t keep a pig, child. What can you be think- 
ing of?” 

“Oh, don’t you? I supposed everybody did, that 
lives in the country; at least, I thought they had 
a pig-pail,” Buddie responded placidly, for his 
urban mind had not been trained to grasp the 
social disgrace inherent in a pig. “Well, anyhow, it’s 
Ebenezer gets the scraps, these days. Really, Aunt 
Julia, there’s no telling what that dog won’t eat.” 


56 BUDDIE 

Miss Julia waived that question in favour of the 
one more imminent. 

“And won’t he come down for the bones?” 

Buddie shook his head. 

“Not on your life! He just looks sad and whim- 
pers, and sticks down one paw or so to see if the 
next stair is steady; but he always dodges back 
again and hides somewhere in your room. I’ve 
been at it for an hour now, and that’s all the good 
it does.” 

“Let me try.” Miss Julia advanced to the foot 
of the stairs and chirruped invitingly. “Come, 
Ebenezer, good old dog!” she urged. “Come to 
your — ” she gulped; then she added bravely; 
“own Aunt Julia.” 

Buddie, from the stair-head, looked down on her 
with mirthful eyes. 

“That would bring him, sure, if anything could, 
Aunt Julia,” he said encouragingly. “Try her 
again.” 

Miss Julia did try her again, and yet again. At 
first, she limited her attempts to little coaxing coos 
and chirrups. Those failing, she snapped her 
fingers, and then patted the palms of her hands 
together. That also failed; and then Miss Julia 
took little runs to the front door and clattered 
the doorknob. 

“Cats, Ebenezer!” she cried out mendaciously. 

From their place at the stair-head, Buddie and 
Ebenezer still watched her, without stirring. The 
only difference in their watching lay in the fact that 
Buddie managed to suppress his mirth. Ebenezer’s 
scarlet, lolling tongue and gay gray eyes betokened 
no suppression. 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 57 

At the end of her eleventh run and clatter, Miss 
Julia halted, breathless. 

“Stupid creature!” she said shortly, as she pushed 
in her hairpins and made fast a loosened puff of 
hair. “What in the world are you going to do with 
him, Ernest?” 

Buddie continued to suppress his mirth. He 
spoke with the utmost gravity. 

“I think I have thought out a way, Aunt Julia. 
If you can manage his front legs, I’ll take the hind 
ones. Then, if we wobble the right corners at the 
right time, we’ll have him walking down the stairs 
before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’” 

Miss Julia could have confessed to no especial 
desire to say ‘Jack Robinson.’ Nevertheless, Bud- 
die’s face was appealing, and, moreover, she never 
had been in the habit of giving up, conquered. To 
be sure, her previous conquests had been largely of 
the intellect, had not concerned anything quite so 
tangible as a vast, untidy dog, and a flight of front 
stairs. What if some one should come to call? In 
that case, she might not be the only one to be in- 
spired to say ‘Jack Robinson!’ Miss Julia hesi- 
tated. Then she kilted up her gown and ascended 
to take her own part in the fray. Afterwards, 
alone in her room, as she surveyed her front breadth, 
she admitted to herself how apt had been her mental 
choice of the word fray. Ultimately, the gown 
found its way to the wife of a home missionary, a 
devout lady who placed her own interpretation upon 
the condition of that same front breadth; but the 
interpretation was more sanctified than accurate. 

A half-hour later found the strife still on. Plainly, 
neither Buddie nor Miss Julia had caught the trick 


58 


BUDDIE 


of wobbling the right corners at the right time; 
plainly, too, Ebenezer had not caught the trick of 
coming down the stairs. Buddie would have given 
up the struggle; but Miss Julia’s firmness had kept 
pace with her weariness. The dog must come down 
those very stairs upon those very paws. 

“Come, Ebenezer!” she commanded, as she held 
a saucer of milk ten inches below the level of his 
nose. 

But Ebenezer never budged. He merely stood 
and gazed down upon her rebukingly, his shaggy 
head cocked on one side and his eyes pleading, as 
plainly as any spoken words, to this obdurate Saint 
Christopher who refused to carry him across. 

“Come, Ebenezer!” Miss Julia ordered him again, 
and she advanced the saucer within a sniffing radius 
of Ebenezer’s nose. 

“Buddie! Where are you? I want you,” came 
a call from outside. 

It was Teresa’s voice, and urgent, for by now the 
duckling episode was full five days old, and buried, 
and forgotten. 

“Here!” The stairs jarred with the volume of 
Buddie’s reply, and a thin trickle of milk went 
meandering down Miss Julia’s right-side breadth. 

“Where?” 

“On the front stairs. Come on in.” 

There was the shortest possible delay. Then 
Teresa appeared in the hall below, with Pet-Lamb 
riding high upon her shoulder. As it chanced, Eben- 
ezer had caught no glimpse of Pet-Lamb since the 
hour of his arrival. Strictly speaking, though, this 
was no mere happening. Miss Julia had been quick 
to realize the unwisdom of repeating the episode 


59 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 

which had marked and marred, not only that hour, 
but also her Minton tea things. Accordingly, she 
had instructed the entire household to guard against 
such repetition. Unfortunately for all concerned, 
Teresa had not been of that household. 

“I’m so sorry, Miss Julia,” Teresa said penitently, 
when quiet was restored, and Lena was mopping up 
the stairs. “I never supposed that Ebenezer had 
it in him to — ” 

But Miss Julia did not wait for the finish of her 
phrase. Instead, her reply fell like a blanket, cover- 
ing all its possibilities. 

“He has,” she said. And then she added grimly, 
“At least, Teresa, you can take to yourself the credit 
of having taught the creature to come downstairs.” 
And then, for obvious reasons, she went away to put 
on another skirt. 

It would be idle to deny that Miss Julia had had 
her hours of mourning for the shattering of her for- 
mer quiet, well-ordered life. Her sense of duty and 
her sense of humour alike spoke out on behalf of 
Buddie; but there were periods when Miss Julia felt 
rising within her an unvoiced regret that either 
sense was quite so vociferous. Buddie was doubt- 
less all that a boy should be. He was healthy, well- 
meaning and moderately clean. Nevertheless, it 
never had occurred to Miss Julia, before his advent, 
to pine for even the temporary possession of a boy. 
Her maiden musings, born of a long-dead, always 
cherished epoch of her life, had gone so far as to 
lead her to contemplate the charms of having had 
a daughter. But a son? Never! 

And now, to all intents and purposes, a son had 
swept in upon her solitude and adopted her. More- 


60 


BUDDIE 


over, this curious reversal of the normal method did 
not stop short at the mere adoption. Miss Julia’s 
theories all asserted that it was for her to take upon 
herself the discipline of Buddie. Instead, poor Miss 
Julia had a shrewd suspicion that already, albeit 
quite without deliberate intention, Buddie was dis- 
ciplining her. Buddie, that is, plus Ebenezer. 

Miss Julia sighed softly, as she hung her frock 
across a chair to dry. Then, donning a kimono, she 
sat down in another chair, took Pet-Lamb into her 
arms and prepared to review the situation. 

Just eight days before that very afternoon, she 
and Pet-Lamb had been drinking tea together, 
placid and mannerly. At four o’clock and fifty- 
one and one-half minutes, there had been no symp- 
toms of a break in their well-mannered placidity. 
At four o’clock and fifty-one and three quarters 
minutes, Lena had entered the room and shattered 
that placidity as with a brazen hammer. And since 
then? In contrast to what had gone before, some- 
thing akin to elemental chaos. 

And yet, even apart from the sentimental reasons 
which had bound Miss Julia over to keep the peace, 
Buddie was not a disagreeable boy. At least once 
in every day, he washed himself with a fair degree 
of care. He neither grabbed for things at table, nor 
talked with his mouth full. Moreover, when he re- 
membered, which was not too often, he tightened his 
necktie and turned down his cuffs at dinner. He 
was truthful and moderately courteous, and, most 
astounding fact of all, blacked his shoes without 
being told but once. To Miss Julia’s mind, this last 
fact was little short of a miracle, a twin miracle to 
his being punctual at breakfast. Indeed, on one or 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 


61 


two occasions when her morning nap had been ruth- 
lessly smashed to atoms by Ebenezer’s bark and 
Buddie’s swooping scrabble down the stairs. Miss 
Julia had found it in her heart of hearts to wish that 
her young nephew would sometimes be a little tardy. 

After all the years, though, of her quiet routine. 
Miss Julia needed a good deal more than eight days 
to grow accustomed to the echo of the boyish voice, 
to the clump and the exceeding dustiness of the boy- 
ish boots, to the irresponsible chatter during meal 
hours, the freaks of mischief which came cropping 
out, each now and then. For those past eight days, 
Miss Julia seemed to herself to have been undergoing 
a series of nervous shocks, each one different from 
all its predecessors, each one a little more unexpected 
than the last. Each night at dinner time, Miss Julia 
had uttered a silent prayer for patience to carry her 
through the intervening hours till bedtime. Each 
night at bedtime, Miss Julia had bade the boy good 
night, knowing that her life was broader, sweeter 
for their comradeship. Buddie, clattering down the 
stairs at crack of dawn, Buddie, ready for any fun 
the day might offer, was quite another Buddie from 
the one who, evening after evening, lay on the rug at 
her feet, and told over to her all the long day’s his- 
tory, or else, erect and thoughtful, his brown eyes 
on the embers between the andirons, talked to her 
of Daddy, of their good times together, and of the 
length of the period which must elapse, before those 
good times could begin again. 

And so a week had passed away, a week when Miss 
Julia had alternated between dismay at the sudden 
responsibility which Fate had heaped upon her, and 
complete and irresponsible pleasure in the form which 


62 


BUDDIE 


this responsibility had taken. She had hours of 
wondering a little whether this new care might not 
cut in undesirably upon her leisure for books, and 
for her civic club, and for her embroidery and Italian 
classes; whether it might not tie her down a little, 
might not prove a little narrowing. However, it 
was only an episode. It was unavoidable, yet not 
of her own making. She would take it as it came. 
If only — Her fingers poored Pet-Lamb’s brow very 
gently. If only there had not been the additional 
responsibility incarnated in the frowsy Ebenezer! 

Buddie, meanwhile, had gone away with Teresa; 
and Ebenezer, as a matter of course, had gone, too. 
Teresa’s errand had been a sudden one. Only that 
very morning, it had occurred to somebody or other 
that it was Sandy’s birthday; and Teresa had put 
in a prompt petition that Buddie be included in the 
celebration. 

“ I don’t see why you did n’t think of it before,” 
Buddie had chidden her, with the arrogance of one 
whose birthdays are a matter of respectful consider- 
ation. 

“Oh, it’s almost always somebody’s birthday at 
our house,” Teresa told him casually. “We can’t 
always be counting up ahead; it would take too 
much time. Besides, we generally think of it, by the 
time the day is over. Still, it does seem as if we each 
one of us might remember our own days.” 

“But you can’t well tell of them ahead,” Buddie 
objected. 

“Why not? Ido.” 

“It’s just the same as begging for a present,” Bud- 
die argued, a little bit disdainfully. 

“Not us. We don’t have presents,” Teresa cor- 


PET-LAMB AND EBENEZER 


63 


rected his mistaken idea. “We couldn’t, such a 
tribe of us. It would make — Let’s see.” She lost 
herself in some deep computation. “Nine; times 
ten; plus twice ten. One hundred and ten,” she 
announced triumphantly at last. “It would take 
one hundred and ten presents, every year, that we 
children would be making. And my father is n’t a 
millionaire, by any means.” 

“Oh.” Buddie realized that his answer was flat 
anticlimax. “What do you do, then?” 

“Just celebrate, the way we’re going to do now.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

Teresa chirped to Ebenezer, to distract his mind 
from the memory of Pet-Lamb. 

“They hadn’t decided, when I came away,” she 
answered, with the casualness which already Buddie 
was learning to reckon as one of her most charming 
characteristics. “Plenty of time to settle all that, 
after we get the baskets packed.” 

Contrary to Teresa’s predictions, however, Sandy 
had been the recipient of one present. Duncan, 
the senior of little Tootles by a scanty eighteen 
months, and hence comparatively unversed in mat- 
ters of family tradition, had insisted upon presenting 
Sandy with a mechanical mouse. Moreover, for 
a wonder, the mechanics of the mouse were quite in- 
tact. With the best intentions in life, Eric had be- 
stowed the mouse on Duncan, the preceding Christ- 
mas; and Duncan, after his one convulsive yelp of 
terror at the sight, had insisted that the mouse 
should be kept under an inverted tumbler on the 
nursery table, always with a piece of cheese to bear 
him company. Sandy, who hated the flavour of 
cheese, received the mouse politely, but without 


64 BUDDIE 

enthusiasm. It was left for Buddie to foresee its 
latent possibilities. 

“ Great!” he exclaimed, as Sandy, his nose os- 
tentatiously averted, wound up the mouse and put 
him through his paces. “I’ll give you my second 
best baseball glove for him, Sandy. Say the word, 
and I’ll go over and get it for you now.” 

Sandy did say the word, and the mouse changed 
hands. Not the glove, however; at least, not till 
the next day. The completeness of the exchange 
had been delayed by the appearing of Teresa, a 
paper bag in one hand, little Tootles in the other. 

“Basket’s packed,” she announced laconically. 
“Come along, you two.” 


CHAPTER SIX 


aunt julia’s dinner party 

B UDDIE’S first real mutiny occurred upon the 
night of Miss Julia’s first real dinner party after 
his arrival. 

“What for should I eat at second table?” he de- 
manded, after Miss Julia had made known her plans 
concerning the how and where of his repast. 

Miss Julia smiled, and the smile irritated Buddie. 
“At your age, Ernest, you could hardly expect 
to appear among my guests,” she told him, and her 
accent was of the unchastened Miss Julia of the 
days before Buddie’s advent. 

Buddie’s answering smile should have disarmed the 
stony heart of Madame Grundy herself. 

“Guests be hanged, Aunt Julia! Don’t I belong 
here?” he said, and there was more of affirmation 
than of question in the words. 

“Indeed you do, Ernest,” she assented. “I shall 
be lonely enough, when you go away again. How- 
ever, that does n’t enter into the question that we 
are discussing. At your age — ” 

“What’s my age got to do with it?” Buddie argued. 
“As long as my table manners are all right, I can’t 
see what difference it makes, whether I’m fourteen 
or forty.” 

“It’s not alone your manners,” Miss Julia had 
a chilly consciousness that she spoke pedantically. 


66 


BUDDIE 


“At a dinner party, Ernest, the people are supposed 
to be able to converse.” 

“Hh!” Buddie’s accent spoke volumes. “Do I 
generally keep still?” 

Miss Julia gave a little sigh. This was by no means 
the first time that she had found it hard to corner 
Buddie in an argument. She shifted the ground of 
her reasoning with what seemed to her astounding 
wiliness. 

“Besides,” she added, quite as if she had not 
heard his last remark; “I am not at all sure that 
their talk would be especially interesting to you, 
Ernest.” 

“Try me and see,” he dared her promptly. “I’ll 
risk it. Besides, maybe I could turn it the other 
way about, and make things interesting for them. 
It’s our place, you know,” he added with a naivete 
which, Miss Julia suspected, was not entirely genu- 
ine; “to make things interesting for our guests.” 

Miss Julia caught him up quickly. 

“It is our place, Ernest, to find out what our 
guests are interested in, and then to talk to them 
about it,” she corrected. 

Buddie suspected an intentional lesson veiled in 
the correction. He shied away from it promptly. 
He had a manful fashion of preferring to take his 
pills in all their naked bitterness. This species of 
sugar coating he regarded as an insult to his common 
sense and to the ultimate regions of his digestive 
apparatus. 

“Who’s coming, anyhow?” he demanded curtly. 

“Judge Elgar and his wife, and Mr. Baldwin, and 
the Bishop and his wife, and some other people you 
don’t know. Mr. Baldwin,” Miss Julia added 


AUNT JULIA'S DINNER PARTY 67 

craftily; “is the man who is writing all those articles 
about the need of stricter discipline of boys.” 

Buddie shied again. 

“Are the Hamiltons coming?” he asked. 

“Oh, no.” 

“Why not?” 

It was Miss Julia’s turn to shy. 

“They don’t go to dinner parties.” 

“Why not?” pursued her remorseless inquisitor. 

The whole code of social science was involved in 
Miss Julia’s answer. Moreover, the code, seemingly 
so simple, in reality became suddenly complex, when 
viewed by Buddie’s downright eyes. 

“They don’t know the other people,” she said, 
at length. 

“But they know you, and you could introduce 
them,” Buddie argued. 

“I could; but — ” 

“And you told me that you liked them; that 
they were nice people; and that you’d like to have 
a daughter just like Teresa,” Buddie continued to 
argue. 

“Yes. Only—” 

“Then why don’t you ask them to your dinner?” 
he demanded point blank. 

Miss Julia started to reply. Then suddenly she 
remembered that Pet-Lamb was shut up in the 
library and wailing loudly. She went in search of 
Pet-Lamb, and forgot all about coming back again. 

All this was after breakfast. At noon, Buddie 
renewed the discussion; at least, in so far as it con- 
cerned his own place at the table. To his surprise, 
he found Miss Julia obstinate, stony-hearted. Argu- 
ments failed with her, and cajolings, and even threats 


68 


BUDDIE 


of boyish vengeance which left her outwardly calm, 
but inwardly uneasy. Those past days had taught 
her much, regarding Buddie’s ingenuity in finding 
out a way to get the best of any situation. Buddie 
at last gave up, however, and departed on his heels, 
irate in temper and injured in his boyish feelings. 

“She need n’t feel so smart about her darned old 
Bishop!” he soliloquized profanely, once he had 
locked himself up in his room, his heels on the rungs 
of his chair and his elbows on his knees. “Anybody 
that wants can get a bishop ; but it is n’t everybody 
that has an only nephew from New York. And she 
thinks I’m not good enough to eat at table with the 
Bishop! And she’s leaving me to go hungry, or else 
eat up the scraps left over in the kitchen!” Buddie’s 
imagination was working grandly now. It worked 
more grandly still, as he went on. “Like as not, 
I’ll starve. Aunt Julia wouldn’t care, though, as 
long as she had her Bishop, and could give him pork 
chops and ice cream. But, when I’m gone — ” 
Buddie shook his head at Ebenezer with such solem- 
nity that Ebenezer whimpered in sympathy with the 
sorrowful picture that his master’s words suggested. 

Then silence fell upon the room, a mournful 
silence. Ebenezer’s gray eyes only beheld his 
master; but Buddie’s eyes, blind to the loving face 
upturned to his, were fixed upon a distant vision 
of waving greensward and white marble, his mind 
busy with weighing the relative attractions of 
neglect and broken heart , as phrases descriptive of 
the reasons for his own demise. 

From consequences to penalties, the mental step 
was but a short one. The corners of Buddie’s lips 
stopped drooping, and he clutched his red head 


AUNT JULIA’S DINNER PARTY 69 


with his hands, and then began to rub them up 
and down across his hair. In time, of course, Miss 
Julia would repent. However, it was only fair 
that he, the sufferer, should have a share in arrang- 
ing for the inevitable repenting. He rubbed his 
head more and more slowly, as he thought and 
thought. Then, of a sudden, his heels slid to the 
floor and, letting go his head, he brought his hands 
down on his knees with sudden gusto. 

“Got it, Ebenezer!” he announced, softly, but in 
a tone which dismissed Ebenezer’s worst misgivings. 
“That’s what!” 

And, greensward and gleaming marble alike for- 
gotten, he fell to rummaging among his best shirts 
in the bottom bureau drawer, where he had stowed 
away the trophy he had bargained for and won, on 
Sandy’s birthday. 

It became necessary to shut out Ebenezer on the 
stair-top, while Buddie tried out the motor and 
assured himself that everything was all in order for 
his plan. That done, wrapping his treasure in a 
handkerchief, he tucked it back again among his 
shirts, opened the door to the wailing and sus- 
picious Ebenezer and, serene of brow and whistling 
softly to himself, went down the stairs, out of the 
house and through the garden, in search of Teresa. 

And Miss Julia, who had been experiencing her 
own bad half-hour, looked after him with misty 
eyes. 

“Dear child! It is so hard to refuse him any- 
thing,” she said. “It’s all the harder, too, because 
he takes it all so sweetly. I wonder if I really 
could n’t tuck him — ” 

Because it was Saturday afternoon and still 


70 


BUDDIE 


early, quite as a matter of course, Buddie sought 
Teresa at the playhouse. To his surprise, he found 
the playhouse door inhospitably locked against 
him. Nothing daunted, he applied his snub nose 
to the nearest window pane. The place was quite 
deserted, save for the scape-goat, Rosa, who, prone 
in a corner with her face to the floor, bore mute 
witness to the total depravity of things in general. 

Buddie smiled in perfect comprehension. 

“Here, too!” he muttered, as he turned away. 
“It’s evidently in the air, like dogdays.” 

He found Teresa at last in the place which seemed 
to him least likely, the family kitchen. Guided 
thereto by the clatter of many dishes, he halted to 
ask a question as to Teresa’s whereabouts, before 
he really was aware that Teresa herself would be 
the recipient of the question. 

“Well, what are you doing, I’d like to know,” 
he questioned banally. 

“I should think you might know, without the 
asking,” Teresa retorted. 

Buddie shut his lips and considered. The trail 
was over everything, that day, it seemed. Teresa 
was undeniably testy, and for no reason under the 
sun. Well, let her. 

“Been having an extra big dinner party?” he 
made further question, as amicably as he was able. 

Teresa cast upon him a glance which showed 
quite plainly that she would far more gladly have 
cast on him her stick dishcloth. 

“Dinner party!” she echoed. “No. This is 
work.” 

“Isn’t the other?” Buddie queried. 

“No. Not the same way.” The water splashed, 


AUNT JULIA’S DINNER PARTY 71 


as a pile of plates was lowered into the pan. “Satur- 
day, too!” Teresa grumbled then. “It’s always 
that way.” 

“What way?” Buddie did not intend to be rude 
nor stupid; but Teresa’s meaning was opaque to 
him. 

Teresa turned upon him in a fresh wave of exas- 
peration. 

“Do come in and sit down, Buddie,” she ordered 
him; “ not stand there in the door and ask questions 
like a katydid.” 

Mercifully for Teresa’s poise, Eric was not present 
to remind his sister that katydids were not, as a 
rule, inquisitive; and Buddie ignored the language 
in the fact. He edged into the room, sat down 
gingerly on the nearest flat surface, and prepared 
to offer sympathy. Before he could offer it, how- 
ever, it transpired that once more he had made a 
blunder and aroused Teresa’s ire. 

“Look out!” she said shortly. “Don’t sit on 
that pieboard; it’s all over flour and shortening. 
I do wish boys would ever look at what they’re 
doing.” 

Buddie arose, dusted his nether surface with the 
palms of his hands, and once more settled himself, 
this time on top of one of the set tubs in the corner. 

“What’s the row, Teresa?” he queried then. 

The suds swashed angrily about the dishes. At 
last, — 

“Everything,” Teresa made comprehensive an- 
swer. 

“Of course,” Buddie assented pessimistically. 
“But give it a name.” 

“It’s Horace,” she burst forth suddenly. “It 


72 


BUDDIE 


always is one of those boys or other. I wish I were 
the oldest sister of an only child like you. Then 
there would n’t be all these dishes to wash.” 

Buddie bowed to her logic, although he regretted 
it that the compliment to himself, seemingly so 
imminent, should have faded into so prosaic a 
statement of unsentimental fact. 

“What’s Horace done now?” he asked, as sym- 
pathetically as he was able. 

To his surprise, Teresa turned and rent him in 
his sympathy. 

“You need n’t say now , in that superior tone,” 
she snapped. “Horace is as good as you are, any 
day in the week.” 

Buddie shook his head. Teresa was undeniably 
testy. Still, there never was any particular sense 
in arguing with a girl. Accordingly, he held his 
peace. 

“I should think you might say you were sorry 
for the poor little boy,” Teresa chid him, after she 
had become weary of the silence. 

“What’s happened to him?” Buddie asked her 
warily. 

“A perfectly terrible toothache.” Teresa em- 
phasized her words by means of her stick dish- 
cloth, and punched the bottom out of a china cup. 
“That’s always the way it is!” she lamented, in a 
sudden recurring wave of self-pity. “Somebody 
goes and gives Horace a ten-cent piece because he 
is so cunning; and he buys hard candy, and has a 
toothache, and keeps poor mother awake, all night 
long, Friday night, too; and then I have to give 
up my holiday, and spend the whole livelong morn- 
ing in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for that awful 


AUNT JULIA’S DINNER PARTY 73 

tribe of boys to eat, and then washing up the dishes 
when they’ve finished.” Teresa’s woe rose to a 
climax. “And I was going to take you to the 
place I told you about, Sandy’s birthday.” 

Buddie’s heart melted promptly at this unex- 
pected manifestation of Teresa’s continued good 
will towards himself. 

“Were you really, Teresa? That’s fine of you. 
But it’s early yet. Maybe, if I pitch in and help 
you, there’ll be time for us to go. Here, give us 
that mop. I’d break ’em, if I wiped; but I can 
slosh on water, just as well as you.” 

And so he could, if flying lumps of suds were any 
test. Moreover, such was the comfort of his moral 
support that Teresa smiled and held her peace, 
even while she surreptitiously scratched away the 
little sticky blobs of soaked potato which had defied 
his dishcloth. Together they finished the dishes, 
together they tidied the room, while Buddie, yield- 
ing to the mood of confidence which lay upon the 
air, told Teresa of his own grievance, beginning with 
the dinner party and ending with a realistic picture 
of the waving greensward which had accomodatingly 
doubled its original proportions and offered place 
for two repentant mourners, Miss Julia and the 
candy-eating Horace. 

Unhappily for Buddie’s feelings, however, Teresa 
scoffed at the waving greensward. 

“Fudge!” she said. “What’s the use of dying, 
just for a little thing like that?” 

“Angels don’t wash dishes,” Buddie reminded 
her gloomily; “nor have to eat at second table.” 

“I’d rather eat at second table,” Teresa retorted, 
with some spirit; “than have to live everlastingly 


74 


BUDDIE 


on manna. It would be worse than shredded 
wheat. Besides, Miss Julia’s very good to you.” 

“So’m I good to her,” Buddie objected. 

“Yes, perhaps; but not in the same way. And 
she’s good to everybody, always. Even the Sal- 
vation Army people say they don’t see how they 
ever could get on without her old hats.” 

Buddie flushed. 

“I’m no Salvation Army sinner,” he contradicted 
curtly. 

Teresa replied from her superior pinnacle of 
girlishness, from, too, her recent depths of testiness 
which even now were only half appeased. 

“No; they only get drunk and steal in places you 
don’t hear about till afterwards. That’s nothing 
like so bad as to have a boy bring a horrid great 
dog to live in your house, and let the dog carry 
your nice white cat around in his dirty mouth.” 

There was a silence, brief, but dramatic. Then 
Buddie spoke, also briefly, but also dramatically. 
Then he departed on his heels. It was a bad, black 
day in all his universe; stormclouds hung heavy 
in the air. Nevertheless, such insults, hurled at 
the unconscious Ebenezer, he would not, could not 
brook. Therefore the things he said are better for 
the editing. 

Buddie spent the remainder of the afternoon in 
the society of Sandy and of Sandy’s chiefest chum, 
who, by the way, was not the serious-minded Eric. 
Then, less than an hour before dinner, he came 
trudging home, with no sign upon him of his mid- 
day mood of opposition. Later, and hard upon the 
time for the arrival of her guests, Miss Julia found 
him standing in the dining-room, apparently lost in 


AUNT JULIA’S DINNER PARTY 75 

admiration of the brave array of linen and crystal, 
ferns and flowers which lay outspread before him. 

“It is pretty; isn’t it?” he said ingenuously, as, 
hearing the rustle of her frock, he turned to face 
her. “I thought you wouldn’t mind it, if I just 
came in to have a look.” 

Miss Julia’s hand rested for a moment on his 
shoulder. 

“Poor old Ernest!” she said. “But I’ve ordered 
Lena to see that you get something extra good out 
of every course.” And then she wondered; all at 
once, Buddie was blushing furiously. 

Not long afterward, Miss Julia was destined to 
know the cause of the blush. Buddie, secreted in 
the hall closet underneath the stairs, heard the 
front-door bell ring once, twice, and yet more times. 
He heard the rustle of feminine best skirts and the 
tramp of masculine best shoes moving up the 
stairs above him; he heard the increasing babble 
of voices, and then the little hush, as the guests 
started towards the dining-room. By the time he 
had heard the scraping of many chair-legs on the 
floor, Buddie could neither contain his curiosity, 
nor could the closet contain Buddie, any longer. 
Noiselessly he opened the door, noiselessly he crept 
out across the hall and halted in the shelter of the 
half-closed door between the dining-room and hall. 

It was a pretty sight upon which Buddie’s eyes 
were resting; he had seen few prettier in his life: 
the softly-lighted room, the flowers, the subdued 
gleam of silver and cut glass strewn along the shin- 
ing damask. At the head of the table sat Miss 
Julia, the Bishop at her right hand. She was 
dressed in some sort of fluffy white stuff, and the 


76 


BUDDIE 


green stones of her necklace glistened in the light, 
as she bent over to say a few words to her neigh- 
bour, then straightened back into her chair and 
lifted up her napkin. It was a pretty picture, and 
one full of the sober, well-bred quiet born of experi- 
ence in many similar groupings. But — 

Buddie shut his hands across his widening mouth, 
and counted the seconds until Miss Julia should 
unfold her napkin. 

However, Miss Julia was deliberate, that night. 
She fussed with her flowers, then gave a smiling 
attention to a long-winded speech from her left- 
hand neighbour. Then, the smile still on her lips, 
her fingers once more shut upon her napkin. 

Instantly the sober, well-bred quiet was torn to 
tatters. There was a single shrill outcry, half of 
surprise, half fear; there was an answering chorus 
of yet shriller cries, and of the clashing of disordered 
silver, and of spatting hands descending heavily 
upon the damask. Then, above the bedlam, there 
arose the triumphant voice of Mr. Baldwin, the man 
who wrote things in the magazines concerning the 
discipline of boys. 

“I’ve got him!” he trumpeted vaingloriously. 
And then, in quite another tone, he added, “Oh, 
by Jove!” 

And then Buddie judged that it was time for 
him to go away upstairs. 

Later, much later, Miss Julia came to him in his 
room where he had put himself to bed without his 
dinner, hoping, by this self-inflicted punishment, to 
melt her heart and so to stave off the worst of the 
inevitable lecture. Miss Julia came and knocked. 
Then, opening the door, she stood there on the 


AUNT JULIA’S DINNER PARTY 77 


threshold, a slim pale figure silhouetted sharply 
against the vivid lights outside. Buddie admitted 
the graciousness of the vision, even while he braced 
himself to bear the lashing of the vision’s tongue. 
After all, why not? At least, he had had his tem- 
porary fill of fun. Instead, though, — 

“Oh, Ernest,” she said to him quite quietly; “I 
wonder if you realized how hard for me you were 
going to make things.” 

And then, all of a sudden, Buddie found himself 
wondering why it was he had not seen till then 
just how worn-out and trite and foolish had been his 
cherished joke. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


THE BOYS* SPORT 

S ANDY’S celebration, by the way, had been a 
glorious success, an astounding success, it seemed 
to Buddie, thinking it over later and considering its 
elements. It had been a picnic; but none of the 
customary elements of a modern picnic had entered 
into its making. They had not ridden anywhere, 
nor sailed. They had spent no money on sweets, 
nor yet on souvenir stands. They had just gone; 
that was all. Of course, they had had a luncheon. 
Indeed, it was that luncheon which, to Buddie’s 
mind, made the difference between that picnic and 
all the other picnics of his past life. There were 
stacks and heaps of food. The number of boyish 
stomachs to be filled made the amount a matter of 
primary necessity. There were three sorts of sand- 
wiches, whole-slice sandwiches with the crust on, 
not miserable little one-bite affairs. And there 
was thin brown-bread-and-butter, and another sort 
where the brown-bread was spread with cheese and 
sprinkled with chopped peppers. And there were 
three glasses of jelly, and tarts, and a layer cake or 
so, and a lot of little turnovers, baked that morn- 
ing and still almost quite hot. And there were some 
other things too, Buddie explained to Miss Julia, 
that night, only he had forgotten what they were, 
except a lot of yellow napkins that it did n’t 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 79 

make any difference whether you spilled things on 
or not. 

They walked all the way there and back again, 
with Mrs. Hamilton pushing little Tootles in his 
pram, and all the baskets, seven of them, piled into 
Horace’s express wagon. And they played things, 
and climbed trees. After luncheon, they sat around 
for a while and told riddles, and Eric cut up an empty 
hornet’s nest and showed them how the rooms fitted 
together. All in all, Buddie said contentedly, it 
had been a splendid picnic, a perfect epoch-maker. 

After that, and after the subsequent mirth and 
penitence attending upon Miss Julia’s dinner party, 
an interval of flat calm shut down on Buddie. In 
the first place, he was on his best behaviour, result 
of his penitent discovery that his mouse-y trick upon 
Miss Julia had left something to be desired upon 
the score of manners. Moreover, the excitement 
of fitting himself into his new home had worn itself 
out a little; and, in comparison with the elaborately 
simple routine of his former school, this country 
substitute seemed very humdrum. 

True, the boys played baseball and, after a fashion, 
field hockey; but there were no matches with other 
schools, matches presided over by masters who 
tried to cover up their real interest beneath a mask 
of seeming boredom. The presence of the girls, too, 
in their section of the yard, changed all things, not 
always desirably, or so it seemed to Buddie. Teresa 
was the first girl he had ever really known. He 
liked her absolutely, taken as an individual; viewed 
as a type, he liked her not at all. Moreover, he was 
shrewd enough to notice that Teresa, mingling with 
others of her type, was by no means the same Teresa 


80 


BUDDIE 


whom he knew by way of the garden fence. She 
giggled more, and even added emphasis to her words 
by the use of her elbow. She had more mysteries, 
too, secrets from Buddie which, however, seemed 
to be common property among her girl companions. 
Buddie affected to regard these secrets as too trivial 
to be worth consideration. The fact of the matter 
was, however, he was devoured with curiosity con- 
cerning them, devoured with jealousy when Teresa 
stuck up her yellow head, and walked apart, and 
whispered to the other girls. Strangely enough, 
though, it was upon the other girls that Buddie laid 
the blame of all these manifestations on Teresa’s 
part. 

All in all, then, Buddie did not like the girls, al- 
though, in reality, he did not know them in the 
least. With them, he was either dumb and glum, 
or else condescending; and the girls who, at the 
start, would have been glad to be friends with this 
new city boy who had come to live at Miss Julia’s, 
realizing his indifference to their charms, tucked 
their disregarded charms out of sight and showed 
him only their least winning side. As result, had it 
not been for Teresa and Miss Julia, Buddie would 
have turned into a woman-hater of the most crabbed 
species. 

The boys he liked better, even if they had only 
hazy notions as to team play, and confessed them- 
selves frankly indifferent to the charms of cricket. 
Sandy was by all odds his favourite among them; 
and Sandy’s close second was the son of the local 
barber, best runner in the school, a boy who could 
be downed in any contest without making whimpers 
or excuses. That he wore quite obvious patches 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 81 

on his cut-down clothes was a detail which Buddie 
counted not at all. Any fellow could have a tailor 
for the buying, he confided to Miss Julia during one 
of their evening confabulations; but not one fellow 
in an hundred could match up to Roger’s legs and 
grit. 

Miss Julia, born conservative, and somewhat of 
an aristocrat withal, yet rejoiced at Buddie’s point 
of view. Years since, she had decided that her life 
would have been a good deal more satisfactory, if 
only she could have taught herself the trick of tak- 
ing people as they came. Unhappily, she could n’t. 
Indeed, that had been the reason for the rather 
empty house; the reason, too, that Miss Julia had 
never really been good chums with Daddy. Between 
the two of them, there had never been the slightest 
friction. It was only that Miss Julia, younger and 
more finical, had drawn her social skirts aside from 
certain of Daddy’s poorer affiliations. Daddy be- 
lieved in luxury, if one could have it; he did not 
think, however, it was the sole measure of all that 
was best in life. Beside Daddy’s life, though, with 
all its vivid, crowded interests and human ties, that 
of Miss Julia was like an empty shell, roomy and 
beautiful, but now and then a little lonesome. 

On that account, she confessed to herself that she 
was really glad of Buddie’s invasion of her home. 
Buddie was curiously like his father, only not so 
sure of the truth of his own opinions. It was rather 
interesting, now and then, to get his point of view 
and to compare it with her own. Moreover, upon 
one or two occasions recently, Miss Julia had modi- 
fied her viewpoint until it had matched up with 
Buddie’s own. 


BUDDIE 


And, meanwhile, the days went past them, some 
slowly, some with a rush which left them seeming 
like nothing in the world but a swift, happy dream. 
April had gone, with its irresponsible splashes of 
rain, its early blossoms and its widening leaves. 
Then May had come and gone, the gay, sweet May 
of southern New England, with its warm, breezy 
days and its long, soft twilights, its belated daffo- 
dils and its early strawberries, its whirring, tuneful 
congregation of bird and insect life. To Buddie, 
who had known spring only in the asphalt streets, 
with an occasional Saturday in the Bronx, or a yet 
more occasional week end in the real country, this 
on-coming of the summer was a delirium of delights. 
There were so many walks to be taken afield, so 
many birds to watch and, it must be stated with all 
due regret, sometimes to chase; there were so many 
early butterflies to add to his collection; there was 
a whole thicket of potential canes and whistles, a 
stone’s throw from Miss Julia’s back fence. Above 
all else, there was the brook. 

During that early edge of summer, Buddie as- 
sumed in swift succession the functions of ship 
builder, navigator, engineer and irrigation expert. 
He launched boats of every description, until Miss 
Julia, asked to name them, was finally forced to fall 
back upon the tables in the Book of Chronicles. 
He widened the channel and built a dam which 
delighted the remaining ducklings, but brought 
down upon Buddie a lecture from Mr. Hamilton 
who was so narrow-minded as to object to the con- 
sequent flooding of his new asparagus bed. However, 
Buddie found a joy even in his affliction. With 
Sandy in his war-paint to represent the Kaiser and 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 


83 


to command the invading fleet, Buddie tore the 
unappreciated dam to pieces, drowning the fleet in 
the escaping tide. Unhappily, however, he almost 
drowned the Kaiser, too, and sent him home to the 
long-suffering Mrs. Hamilton, with muddy water 
dripping from his raiment and forming miry pools 
all over the scene of his confessional. 

The dam gone, and Sandy temporarily out of 
disgrace again, the two boys set to work once more, 
this time to build a fleet of Dreadnaughts. During 
these days of feverish toil, they established a sudden 
claim to cousinship, and addressed each other as 
George and Bill. As the day of the launchings ap- 
proached and the naval war came near at hand, 
party spirit mounted high. Teresa, especially, flung 
herself into the international crisis with a will, and 
rashly promised to manufacture flags for all the 
ships of both sides. Next day, after an unavailing 
struggle to copy the triple cross of the Union Jack, 
she suddenly changed her mind and clambered down 
from the political fence she had so ostentatiously 
bestridden. She said it was on account of her re- 
lationship to Sandy that she had descended on the 
German side; but Buddie, coming upon the scattered 
debris of her earlier efforts, had his doubts. Miss 
Julia shared the doubts and, liking Buddie’s stoic 
reticence upon the subject, she made a hasty trip to 
town, the morning of the battle, and came home with 
a dozen tiny Union Jacks in her bag. It was the 
most natural result in the world that, an hour later, 
the flagship took the water as the Julia, not the 
Britannia, as had been announced beforehand. 
Moreover, lined up on the bank above the battle. 
Miss Julia Tenney outranked the assembled and 


84 BUDDIE 

opposing Hamiltons, that afternoon, in enthusiasm 
if not in noise. 

The absurdity of the whole situation struck Miss 
Julia not one whit. Instead, she had a modest 
sense of humdrum duty overpraised, when the vic- 
torious Buddie laid the dripping flagship at her feet 
and swept his arm across his weary brow, as he 
remarked, — 

“Bully for you, Aunt Julia! ’Twas your yells 
that kept me going.” 

Afterwards, though, Miss Julia had a time of 
wondering just why the boyish appreciation seemed 
to her so sweet. 

If Sandy was defeated and swept off the political 
map of Europe, at least he bore his adversary no 
grudge. Next morning early, the first morning of 
June, he went in search of Buddie. 

“Circus, next week,” he announced laconically. 

“How do you know?” 

“Saw the man starting to put up the posters.” 

“When?” Buddie demanded, as his fingers went 
in search of his pocket. 

“Wednesday.” 

Buddie withdrew his hand. 

“No good to us,” he said regretfully. 

“Why not?” 

“School.” 

“Shucks!” Sandy retorted, with an uncouthness 
for which Teresa, had she been present, would have 
smitten him sorely. “We’ll be back in time.” 

It was Buddie’s turn to stare. 

“In time?” he echoed. 

“Yep.” Sandy’s vocabulary felt the near ap- 
proach of the circus, to its own disadvantage. “It 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 


85 

generally gets in at between four and five, and it 
takes about an hour to get unloaded. That ’s before 
six, and it ’s only three miles, if we don’t go out to 
see it set up, so it ought to get us back by 'breakfast 
time.” 

Strange to say, Buddie experienced no difficulty 
in disentangling the thread of Sandy’s meaning. 

“See it come in!” His eyes blazed at the thought. 

“Sure! What else? It’s better than parade, any 
day, even if there was n’t school. Sometimes they 
let you get in close enough to feed the elephants.” 

“That’s nothing.” All at once, to Sandy’s sur- 
prise, Buddie turned disdainful. “We always do 
that, after the show is over, quarts and quarts.” 

“Who’s talking about the show?” Sandy asked 
impatiently. 

“I am. I always go, of course.” 

Sandy’s impatience increased a little. 

“No of course about it; that is, not when there 
are ten of you,” he contradicted. 

“But there are n’t. You need n’t all go,” Buddie 
said, with a kindly attempt to simplify the prob- 
lems of the Hamilton clan. 

Sandy turned upon him a disdainful stare. 

“ Where ’d you stop?” he queried, with the air 
of one who propounds a poser. 

And Buddie had the grace to admit that he was 
posed. Where, indeed, could one create a gap in the 
close line that stretched downward from Teresa to 
the little Tootles who, though potential master of 
his first tooth, yet still lacked a more specific 
name. 

By mutual consent, the two boys elaborated their 
plans in secret. Buddie had suggested the inclusion 


86 BUDDIE 

of Eric; but Sandy had been prompt to down the 
suggestion. 

“He’d do a speech about every last animal that 
comes overboard,” Sandy objected. “I’d rather 
take a geography on a birthday picnic than have 
Eric on hand at such a time as that. If he goes with 
you, then I take Roger for mine.” 

The threat was quite sufficient with one uttering. 
Buddie liked Roger; he was not altogether sure that 
he cared to have Sandy like Roger, too; in any case, 
not to the point of intimacy. 

“What about Teresa?” he inquired. 

Sandy dismissed the query in three words. 

“She’s a girl,” he said, and he saw no need to 
elaborate his meaning. 

Buddie, however, was not so certain. 

His certainty increased a little, though, as Sandy 
sketched in the details of their plan. They would 
arise at three o’clock, on circus-day morning; not 
because it was absolutely needful, but because they 
both would feel a little safer with the odd half-hour 
as margin. Besides, a fellow never really slept well, 
with a thing like that upon his mind. Buddie could 
set his alarm clock, if he chose; but Sandy, with a 
disdainful sniff, announced that he did n’t want a 
clock, nor any one to call him. And calling would 
be sure to stir up the others, Eric in particular, since 
Eric shared his room. Buddie and he would meet 
out on the lawn at Miss Julia’s. They could have 
some biscuits ready in their pockets, over night; 
and they could eat them as they went along. It 
would be after four, before they reached the side 
track in the railroad yard where the train came in. 
They would have a full hour and a half of bliss, 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 


87 


before it would be time to set out for home and 
school. And how they would tell all the others 
about it, once they did reach home! Sandy paused 
to extract from Buddie a violently- worded pledge 
to the effect that he, Ernest Angell, would not men- 
tion the matter at school till he himself, Alexander 
Hamilton, was at hand to share in the narration. 

“After all, though,” Sandy added rather rashly; 
“there’s no reason all the other fellows shouldn’t 
do it, if they only had the brains to think it out. It’s 
easy. The walk is n’t anything to brag of; and, at 
this end of summer, three in the morning is n’t so 
awful early.” 

Buddie ventured to repeat his former plea. 

“Then why can’t Teresa go?” he asked once more. 

“No place for girls,” Sandy asserted masterfully. 
“The elephants might stampede, or they might tip 
over a cage and let a lion out, or a constructor — ” 

“A — ?” Buddie had not the slightest intention 
of rudeness. It was merely that he did not quite 
catch Sandy’s meaning. 

Sandy took the query snappishly. 

“A snake,” he said; “only there’s more than one 
kind. Still, no matter about that. But, if an 
accident should happen, and Teresa should be there, 
then where ’d she be, with all her skirts to run in? 
Besides,” he added, plainly as an afterthought; 
“she wouldn’t get ready in time. Girls don’t. 
The best thing for us to do, Buddie Angell, is to 
shut our mouths and not tell one single soul what 
we are going to do, until we’ve done it.” 

Much to his own reluctance, Buddie yielded; 
and the two boys shut their mouths accordingly. 
In fact, so far as their plans were concerned, they 


88 


BUDDIE 


not only shut, but locked, them. However, they 
did this in a fashion so ostentatiously secretive that 
it would not have taxed the brain of little Tootles 
himself to have discovered that a mystery was on 
hand, and scheduled to come off on the next Wed- 
nesday morning. Little Tootles, however, was too 
busy cutting teeth just then to feel much interest 
in any lesser trifles. 

Monday came and went, and Tuesday dawned, 
raw and gray, the sort of day which tries the soul 
of one planning for the morrow. More than a 
dozen times, as the day waxed and waned, Sandy 
and Buddie had short, secret-looking interviews 
regarding rain coats and sweaters, or flannel blouses 
and “sneakers.” When, after a seemingly inter- 
minable evening, Buddie at last went to bed, his 
room was lined with garments laid out ready for 
any emergency which might arise, and his alarm 
clock was set punctually at two forty-five. 

Only a little later, it seemed to him, he was 
wakened by the alarm clock pounding away beneath 
his pillow. At first, he ordered it to go to sleep again, 
from a mistaken notion that it was Ebenezer. Then 
he recollected the expedition looming up before him; 
and, after a momentary wish that the late Mr. 
Barnum had never come across the threshold of 
this world’s existence, he yawned, dragged himself 
out of bed and then burned his fingers badly, in 
trying to light his bedroom candle. 

“Shut up, you!” he said savagely at the alarm 
clock, whose monologue was still unfinished. 

That waked up Ebenezer, whose sleep was never 
so heavy as to render him deaf to his master’s voice. 
Ebenezer yawned in his turn and then, beholding 


THE BOYS’ SPORT 89 

Buddie’s unmistakable preparations for departure, 
let off a lusty yap of pleasure. 

Buddie shook his head, as he went stumbling 
down the stairs. He had left the bedroom candle 
to solace the loneliness of Ebenezer, whose mourn- 
ful lamentations were plainly audible throughout 
the otherwise silent house. This sort of thing might 
be good fun; but even the purest pleasure has its 
base in pain. And Sandy had lied flagrantly, when 
he had said that three o’clock in the morning was 
not so very early. Buddie shook his head again, 
as the door groaned out its protestations, when he 
sought to open it. 

Out on the lawn, Sandy had said, Miss Julia’s 
lawn. Buddie had all the details of the plan at his 
tongue’s end. Aware that he was early at the 
tryst, he stepped out on the dewy stretch of turf 
now blanketed with the thick gray shadow of the 
night. He looked about him. Early as it was, he 
could make out a figure waiting in the shadows. 
Sandy so early? As he drew near, the figure hailed 
him; not in the voice of Sandy, though. 

“Hullo! Ready?” said the voice, and Buddie 
jumped as though a Gatling gun had gone off in his 
ear. 

“Teresa!” he exploded, as suddenly as if he had 
been the answering gun. 

“Yes. Hush, though; don’t roar about it.” 
Teresa’s voice sought to appear unconcerned; but 
Buddie fancied that he could make out a little throb 
of excitement beneath the unconcern. 

“What are you doing here, at this time of night?” 
he demanded, with masculine bravado. 

Teresa refused to be bullied. 


90 


BUDDIE 


“Waiting to have you get up and take me to the 
circus,” she responded calmly. And then she added, 
by way of making her welcome doubly sure, “Take 
the basket, please. I put in a few things for early 
breakfast; I thought we might all get hungry on 
the way.” 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 

I T was a full minute before Buddie rallied. Even 
then, too dazed to open argument, he attacked 
the lesser issue. 

“Where’s Sandy?” he inquired. 

Teresa shrugged her shoulders. 

“How should I know? Asleep, I suppose.” 

“But he told me — ” Buddie was beginning. 
Teresa cut in upon his phrase. 

“To meet him on the lawn. Of course. But, if 
you had known Alexander Hamilton as long as I 
have, you would n’t have expected to find him here 
before breakfast.” 

Buddie stared at her in the dawnlight, too as- 
tounded at her perspicacity to discuss the question 
of Sandy’s punctual habits. 

“How did you know about it?” he demanded. 
Teresa’s reply was curt. 

“I’m no mole, and I have common sense and a 
pair of ears. When that Sandy goes to work to 
hatch up a plan and keep it secret, he might as well 
take a megaphone and stand on the post office steps 
and announce it, at the start. It would n’t hurt the 
mystery any, and it would save him lots of trouble.” 

“Perhaps,” Buddie assented slowly, for he had 
had his own occasional misgivings upon that same 
subject. 


92 


BUDDIE 


There came a pause between them. While the 
pause lasted, the sky was turning from dun to 
pearl, and a distant cock began a solo which swiftly 
led into a perfect fugue of cockadoodles. 

“Well?” Teresa said interrogatively then. 

“Well, what?” 

“Are you coming?” 

“Without Sandy?” Buddie’s voice was horrified. 

Teresa laughed. 

“Apparently you can’t very well come with him, 
unless you go get into bed between him and Eric, and 
that would n’t take you far on your way to the 
circus.” 

“He said he’d come,” Buddie reminded her a 
little feebly, for his confidence in Sandy was waning 
with the waning night. 

“So he will, next to-morrow,” Teresa said loftily. 
“Still, if you want to wait and lose the circus — ” 

“I don’t,” Buddie protested. 

“I put almost a half a pie into the basket,” Teresa 
remarked to no one in particular. “There aren’t 
so very many people in the world who realize how 
good pie tastes for breakfast.” 

The pie accomplished more than any amount of 
argument. 

“Come along,” Buddie said shortly. “If Sandy 
catches you, though, you’ll get a licking.” For, at 
three o’clock in the morning, Buddie’s chivalry 
was so far asleep as to leave him convinced of the 
necessity for putting Teresa into her proper place 
once and for all, before she was allowed to set out 
upon their expedition. 

None the less, he put out his hand for the basket. 
His tongue might lag and grow balky in its obedience 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 93 


to his daytime sense of decorum; but Buddie’s creed 
forbade his walking off beside a girl and leaving her 
to carry a burden designed for their common benefit. 
He held out his hand for the basket, then; but, to 
his supreme surprise, Teresa refused to let go her 
hold upon it. In this, Teresa showed her wiliness. 
Long since, in dealing with her many brothers, she 
had learned the exceeding wisdom of keeping her 
hand shut fast on all her trumps, whether those 
trumps were of pictured pasteboard or of pie. 

“ That’s all right,” she asserted promptly. “It 
is n’t heavy; I’ll carry it. Come along.” 

Buddie hesitated for one final instant, gave one 
glance at the Hamilton house, quiet among its 
trees, gave another glance up at his own window 
where a gray and bearded face was peering down 
upon him, a world of reproach in the tilted head and 
in the fond gray eyes. Then, without a word, he 
turned and followed Teresa to the road. 

Long years afterward, Buddie came to look back 
upon that daybreak walk with a tender and appre- 
ciative pleasure, as one does look back upon such 
choice bits of experience which have been disdained 
or disregarded in their time. Mellowed by a long 
perspective, he could see rare beauty in the coming 
of the dawn, the slow change from bluish black to 
palest gray and from palest gray to something akin 
to faint, faint rose, and then the blotting out of all 
the fainter colours, in the sudden flood of gold which 
came bursting from the East. He could hear rare 
music in the early bird-songs, in the first twitters 
that seemed to be questioning of one another whether 
the dawn had really come, and in the swelling chorus 
that sang the jovial march which ushered in the 


94 


BUDDIE 


fuller day. He could feel rare joy in the touch of 
the dawn wind on his freckled cheeks, in the crunch 
of the crisp, dew-soaked grass beneath his heels, 
in the companionship of Teresa who trudged along 
beside him, chattering irresponsibly. All this he 
could see and hear and feel — long afterward. In 
the time of it, however, he was only aware that it 
was half-dark and chilly, that the soaked grass was 
wetting his shoes through and through, that he 
was very sleepy and tired, and that he did wish 
that Teresa — and the that was no conjunction, 
but rather an adjective, betokening disapproval — 
would hold her tongue and let him think what 
excuses he could make to the irate Sandy. 

“Let’s have some pie,” Teresa suggested suddenly, 
with one of the intuitional flashes supposed to be 
characteristic of her sex. 

Heretofore, her words had fallen upon inattentive 
ears. Now, Buddie came to swift attention, al- 
though his dignity demanded that he should not 
seem to assent too eagerly. 

“Well,” he agreed, as dubiously as his ravening 
inner man would let him. 

Teresa once more realized that brevity is the soul 
of wit, and of wisdom, too. 

“All right. Catch hold.” 

Side by side in the green grass of the roadside, 
they squatted on their heels. Buddie made the 
best lap he was able, to support the basket, while 
Teresa poked aside the coverings, drew out a good 
third of an apple pie, and then broke it into osten- 
tatiously uneven portions. 

Buddie’s asperity relaxed somewhat, as he watched 
her. 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 95 


“Oh, I say, that isn’t fair!” he protested; but 
nevertheless his teeth shut around a scallop of the 
larger piece. 

At this point in the later recollections, his memory 
always decided to leave a blank. Stone-cold, day- 
old apple pie, broken off raggedly and eaten, alas! 
from the flat of the hand! And at four o’clock in 
the morning upon an empty stomach ! Unthinkable ! 
However, in its hour, it tasted good. Regardless 
of his garments, he sat back firmly and Teresa sat 
beside him, while they munched and munched in a 
contentment which left their hearts and mouths 
too full for utterance. 

Such periods of silent rapture, as a rule, are 
short-lived and fleeting. This was no exception to 
the rule. Silence and rapture both were shattered 
speedily, as a roar of rage came hurtling down upon 
them from the rear. 

“You mean old pair of — tabby cats!” the voice 
proclaimed, and the welkin rang with the fervour 
of the proclamation. 

Teresa glanced back over her shoulder at the 
irate vision dashing down upon them, an unkempt 
and dishevelled vision with spiky hair, and one 
garter gone on strike, a vision whose collar and 
necktie were waving in its hand. 

“Hullo, Sandy!” she observed dispassionately. 
“Waked up at last? My soul, what a mess you’re 
in!” 

“ Mess ! You — you — ! ” In vain Sandy sought 
his vocabulary through and through, in search of an 
epithet worth consideration. “What are you doing 
here, I’d like to know?” 

“We ’ve eaten up the pie. You ’d better 


96 BUDDIE 

have a doughnut,” Teresa advised him dispassion- 
ately. 

“Doughnut be hanged!” Sandy said, with some 
violence, though his fingers shut about the smooth 
brown ball. “What do you mean, Buddie Angell, 
by rushing off like this?” 

Buddie proceeded to show his kinship to Father 
Adam. 

“Teresa said — ” he was beginning. 

Teresa interpolated, and loftily. 

“Sneak!” she said. 

Buddie turned to rend her. Cold apple pie, eaten 
in the chilly dawn, does not make for righteousness 
and peace. 

“I am not a sneak, either. It’s the plain truth. 
You told me Sandy would n’t wake up in season 
to do any good. Anyhow, I’d as soon sneak and 
tell the honest truth as I would stick myself in where 
I was n’t wanted.” 

There was an instant’s silence, while Buddie 
waited for evidence that he had scored. Sandy, 
though, was too busy gobbling doughnut to speak 
out, while Teresa with an air of unconcerned superi- 
ority was punching and patting at a mysterious 
lump which had appeared inside the front of her 
frock. Under her dexterous manipulations, slowly 
the lump slid upward. Once, midway in its course, 
it appeared to get stalled. Then it moved on again 
until at length it came in sight above the edge of 
her low collar, a gray ooze purse, manifestly much 
the worse for wear. Teresa’s brow, which had grown 
troubled during the punching process, cleared sud- 
denly, as her fingers closed upon her treasure. Then 
she proceeded to score in her turn. 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 97 

“Aren’t I wanted, then?” she demanded, as she 
snapped open the clasp and displayed a silver coin 
within. 

Buddie eyed her frigidly, determined to show no 
consciousness that she had trumped his trick; but 
Sandy, bending forward to peer in, lost himself in 
swift calculations. All the peanuts they would care 
to eat, and at least a dozen “suckers” besides! 
Hurriedly he gulped down the last of his doughnut 
and arose. 

“You’re It, Teresa!” he assured her. “Now 
come along, and see who’ll get there first, us or the 
circus.” 

“Us” got there first, a long two hours first. The 
railroad, or else the circus, appeared to have changed 
its mind about the hour of the arrival and unload- 
ing. The dawn grew into day; the few loungers 
waiting by the track increased to a little army; 
Teresa’s basket was emptied and the napkin hunted 
over for stray “tastes” that might have adhered 
to it in the hasty unpacking, and Sandy, departing 
at a gallop after peanuts, had time to stroll back 
again as slowly as he chose and then to eat up his 
share without undue haste; and still the empty 
rails throbbed to no lilt of the incoming train. 
Buddie and Teresa, tired of waiting, settled them- 
selves in a gravelly ditch beside the track; but 
Sandy, who had resumed his avowed leadership of 
the expedition, strolled to and fro in the crowd, 
man-wise, discussing the probable reasons for the 
delay and asking incisive questions which suggested 
critical disapproval of the railway president. Ob- 
viously, there was fault somewhere or other; and 
it would have been inconceivable to Sandy to blame 


98 


BUDDIE 


the circus. At length, he paused in his gyrations 
and diverted the stream of his criticism until it fell 
on Buddie. 

“If you’d waited, as I told you, we shouldn’t 
have had to sit here, all this blasted morning,” he 
explained severely. “You might have known you 
were going to be hours and hours and hours too 
early. I suppose it was because you were so set on 
coming. Still, you might have waited for a fellow. 
How do you suppose I felt, when I waked up and 
went to the window to find out how early it was, to 
see the heels of you and Teresa just going down the 
other side of Shingle Hill?” 

“How did you see our heels, if we were going down 
the other side?” Teresa asked, with pert pertinence. 
“We were n’t walking on our heads, Sandy.” 

Sandy’s exasperation led him to forget that Teresa 
represented the commisariat of the expedition. 

“I do wish you’d keep still, Teresa. I should 
think you’d rather, anyhow, when you know you 
were n’t asked to come with us.” 

“Who ate the extra doughnut?” Teresa queried 
of a distant corner of the heavens. Then she added 
casually, “It must be almost time for breakfast. 
Buddie, do go and ask one of those men what time it 
really is.” 

“Maybe they’ve left their watches at home, as 
I did,” Buddie suggested, loath to rise, lest Sandy 
should appropriate the comfortable nest that he had 
fashioned in the gravel. 

“They would n’t be such geese,” Teresa told him 
ruthlessly. “Do go along.” 

And Buddie went. His countenance was anxious 
when he came back again. 



The chariots, though, were covered ; the beasts, for the 
most part, invisible. — Page 99. 











































































. 













































































THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 99 

“Quarter past eight !” he said, and his voice 
matched his countenance. “ What will Aunt Julia — ” 

But Sandy cut in. 

“Glory! No school for us!” he proclaimed shrilly. 
“And we could n’t help ourselves, when we did n’t 
have a clock. Besides — Hi! There she comes!” 

And, in all truth, there she did come, a long line 
of flat cars sliding down the track, of flat cars laden 
with tarpaulin-covered chariots and with gilded 
cages. Teresa watched its slow approach, until it 
halted, with a great gold cage filled with invisible 
and roaring beasts drawn up exactly opposite the 
sand heap where she had been sitting. Then she 
heaved a sigh, less, however, of penitence than of 
fulfilled content. 

“Well,” she said philosophically; “the mischief 
is done before this, anyhow. Now we’re here, we 
may as well stay and see it through.” 

And see it through they did, down to the unload- 
ing of the last great chariot, down to the placing 
the last tentpin in the waiting vans. Taken as a 
spectacle and apart from its suggestiveness of greater 
things to come, it was not especially satisfactory, 
save in the case of the elephants who seemed far 
larger, even Buddie admitted, trudging across the 
railway ties than in the circus tent. The giraffe, 
too, insisted upon having his lid taken off himself; 
and, from the top of his own neck, gazed haughtily 
down upon the minions who were busy disembark- 
ing him. The chariots, though, were covered; the 
beasts, for the most part, invisible; and the tent 
contrivances, heaped untidily together, lost all their 
glamour and looked soiled and shabby beneath the 
garish morning sun. Nevertheless, — 


100 


BUDDIE 


“What’s the matter with our walking up the 
street with it a little way?” Sandy suggested, as, 
after a seemingly unending delay, the cavalcade 
set forth towards the circus grounds. “ It won’t be 
much out of our way; and, anyhow, we’re late to 
school, so all we’ve got ahead of us now is to be 
sure to be on time at lunch.” 

Buddie grumbled a little about being hungry; 
and Teresa, as in duty bound, offered a languid 
protest. However, Sandy’s will was dominant. 
Without wasting time in profitless discussion, he 
took Teresa by the elbow and hustled her off upon 
the heels of the departing procession. Moreover, 
by the time they had passed a dozen blocks and 
entered one of the main thoroughfares of the city, 
Sandy’s generalship had been so eager and his en- 
thusiasm so infectious that they all three of them 
were keeping pace with the squad of dusky ele- 
phants, quite at the head of the procession. Ten 
blocks later, they met and passed Miss Julia’s friend, 
the philosophical Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin knew 
them all by sight, wondered a little at their being in 
such a rabble, wondered yet more at the capacious 
basket dangling emptily from Teresa’s hand. But 
Buddie, who of them all had best reason to remember 
Mr. Baldwin, stared through him with unseeing eyes, 
and quickened his step to keep up with the elephants, 
suddenly grown aware that breakfast was now almost 
at hand. 

Arrived at the circus grounds before they actually 
knew it, no mortal human beings could have been 
expected to withstand the temptation of looking on 
at the breakfast ceremony. Neither was it pos- 
sible to tear one’s self away, while the great gilded 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 101 


cages were being uncovered, and the long-tailed 
horses groomed and harnessed for the street parade. 
And then, quite at the other end of the grounds, the 
two-headed giant came strolling into view, talking 
quite affably with the fat lady out of his left-hand 
mouth, and settling the diamond in his necktie in 
quite an ordinary fashion. The whistles were blow- 
ing for twelve o’clock, when the weary trio mounted 
the crest of Shingle Hill upon their homeward 
journey. If their hearts were aware of any grim 
forebodings, at least they also held the pleasant 
consciousness of having made the very most of all 
their opportunities. 

“I s’pose we’ll all three get a licking,” Sandy 
remarked meditatively, when Teresa called his 
attention to the whistles; “but I don’t know but 
it will be worth while. I have n’t had such fun since 
the comet. How is it with you, Buddie?” 

“I’ve had my money’s worth, for sure,” Buddie 
asserted stoutly. 

But Teresa, clutching her empty, withered-looking 
purse, had her doubts. For her, the question was a 
literal one. 

Great was Miss Julia’s consternation, that same 
morning, when it transpired that Buddie was no- 
where to be found. The mere fact of his being late 
to breakfast was too common an occurrence to cause 
Miss Julia any uneasiness, until, all at once, she 
remembered that she had not heard his customary 
clattering descent of the front stairs. Then she sent 
Lena up to Buddie’s room; but her uneasiness, 
increasing fast and faster, sent her hurrying on Lena’s 
heels. What if the boy were ill, or dying? And all 
alone, without her hands to nurse him, her loving 


102 


BUDDIE 


sympathy to cheer him in his pain? Mistress and 
maid stood side by side upon the threshold. The 
maid knocked and waited. The mistress turned 
the doorknob and looked in. 

No Buddie was there; only Ebenezer, lying on 
Buddie’s pink pajamas thrown across the disordered 
bed, lying there with his great head upon his paws 
and his shaggy body shaken with long, sobbing 
sighs of utter lonesomeness. 

At the sight, Miss Julia quite forgot that Eben- 
ezer, only the day before, had been chastised for 
using Pet-Lamb’s head for the handle by which he 
carried her across the room. She hugged the great 
dog to her heart, the while she made distracted 
query, — 

“Where is he, Ebenezer? Where — e — e’s Bud- 
die? Where has Buddie gone?” 

But Ebenezer, his durance ended, his heart cheered 
by Miss Julia’s apparent sympathy, sought to cheer 
her in his turn. He pulled away from her embrace, 
dived underneath the bed and reappeared trium- 
phantly, to offer her the least dilapidated of the 
store of bones he kept secreted there. At another 
time, Miss Julia would have followed up the hor- 
rified censure suggested by Lena’s exclamation; 
but now her mind was filled with other things, or, 
to be more literal, with one other thing alone: the 
present whereabouts of Buddie. 

Search availed nothing, even with Ebenezer ’s aid. 
Indeed, from all appearance, Lena judged that the 
dog was in the secret with his master and pledged 
to tell no tales, so impenetrably did he gaze into 
their faces and refuse to follow up any suggested 
scents. And, as a rule, Ebenezer had showed him- 


THE ARRIVAL OF THE CIRCUS 103 

self past master of trailing anything he wished, from 
Pet-Lamb down. Now he merely yawned and 
looked self-conscious. 

Miss Julia, meanwhile, was beginning to look 
anxious. Search failing, she took her anxious counte- 
nance across the yard, to demand the sympathy 
and advice of Mrs. Hamilton. A mother of ten 
should be far better able to cope with an emergency 
like this than was a solitary spinster, herself a young- 
est child. 

Miss Julia found Mrs. Hamilton tranquilly en- 
gaged in washing up the breakfast dishes, although 
two clean plates upon the table betrayed the fact 
that breakfast was not ended for all the Hamilton 
family. 

“Teresa and Sandy haven’t come in, either,” 
she said, with a cheery calmness which sounded to 
Miss Julia’s ears something little short of callous. 
“The three of them may be off somewhere together. 
Dear knows what mischief it will turn out to be, 
when Sandy has a hand in it.” 

“But aren’t you very anxious?” Miss Julia 
quavered. “Buddie’s father never would — ” 

Mrs. Hamilton’s fat, comfortable laugh broke in 
upon her words. 

“Anxious? Not I. Bring up ten of them, Miss 
Julia, all of them healthy and none of them especial 
dunces about concocting mischief, and you’ll get 
over being anxious. Leave them alone and they’ll 
come home. Only, when they do come home, 
spank them and put them into bed, not cry over 
them as returned prodigals. What is it, Horace?” 

“A paper wiv letters on it,” Horace responded. 
“I finded it pinned on to Teresa’s bed-pillow.” 


104 


BUDDIE 


“Give it to mother, dear.” Despite her vaunted 
courage, Mrs. Hamilton’s voice shook a very little. 
Mischief such as customarily was evolved by Teresa’s 
fertile brain did not call for farewell epistles pinned, 
after the tradition of all dramatic exits, to the un- 
ruffled pillow of her girlish bed. 

Obediently Horace handed over the valedictory. 
Crumpled and soiled by smudgy boyish hands, it 
had been written on Teresa’s very best note paper 
in Teresa’s fairest, plainest hand. Mrs. Hamilton 
took it, read it and, without a word, handed it over 
to Miss Julia, waiting breathless at her side. 

“Gone to the circus with Sandy and Buddie An- 
gell,” it ran tersely. “In case of accident, please 
notify our nearest living relatives, Mrs. John Hamil- 
ton and Miss Julia Tenney.” 

And this, with an admirable forethought quite 
beyond her years, Teresa had pinned to her pillow, 
ready for use in case of need. 


CHAPTER NINE 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 

P RANKS vary; but lectures are always more or 
less alike. Accordingly, there is no need to set 
down here the remarks which followed the home- 
coming of the weary, dusty trio, nor yet to comment 
upon the difference between the rhetoric of Mrs. 
Hamilton and that of Miss Julia Tenney. Most 
human beings, living now to-day, are in a position out 
of their own memories to make up the especial brand 
of phraseology needed. It is enough to say that, 
among the bright faces turned to greet the teacher 
when school opened on that afternoon, there were 
three chastened countenances. Furthermore, it was 
something more than mere coincidence which brought 
it to pass that, on that selfsame afternoon, Teresa 
and Buddie and Sandy reaped each his sole good- 
conduct mark of the entire term. The all-grasping 
hand of Fate occasionally condescends to put a fin- 
ger into even the very smallest pie. A hot-box on a 
moving freight car enabled Sandy to answer “ Per- 
fect !” to the roll call, that afternoon. Unhappily, 
he forgot the cause, and became disagreeably smug 
over the unwonted result. 

Buddie and Teresa, however, took the matter 
more to heart, and were inclined to look upon even 
the golden memory of the two-headed giant with 
certain reservations. On that account, it was a good 


106 


BUDDIE 


ten days before they either of them felt disposed to 
talk the matter over much. Even then, the matter 
swiftly fell out of sight, behind the greater interests 
involved within Miss Julia. 

“She’d make a ripping mother, Teresa!” Buddie 
asserted, as he suddenly sat up upon his heels to face 
his companion. 

Buddie had found Teresa in the strawberry bed, 
that morning, an empty basket in her hand, two 
others by her side, and the sun full upon her back. 
It was Sandy’s work to pick the strawberries; but 
Sandy had been assailed by sudden prickings of the 
conscience regarding the currant bushes he had failed 
to hoe, the Saturday preceding. Hoe in hand and 
apologies upon his tongue, he had explained to his 
mother his inability to get ready to pick the berries 
in season for the midday meal. And Mrs. Hamilton, 
rejoiced at anything which went to prove that 
Sandy owned a conscience, praised him effusively 
and, the others being out of reach, sent Teresa to 
pick the berries in his stead. Teresa, however, in- 
finitely less guileless by reason of her lesser age, 
doubted the conscience. The currant bushes were 
always in the shade till noon. Besides, the mos- 
quitoes vastly preferred the regions of the straw- 
berry bed. She mentioned both these facts to Sandy, 
who was placidly paddling over the surface of the 
soil. After that, Sandy wiped his brow, every few 
minutes, shaking the resultant drops from his fingers 
with a patient little sigh. Between the sighs, he laid 
down his hoe and slapped mosquitoes with resound- 
ing zeal. Teresa mopped her dripping face, mean- 
while, ^nd then sought to scratch herself between 
her shoulder blades. She had been told, all her life. 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 107 


that a conscience was an uncomfortable sort of a 
possession. It was her growing theory that the dis- 
comfort usually lapped over upon the next of kin. 

“How you frightened me!” she said, a little testily, 
as Buddie, with a sudden whoop, landed at her side. 

“I meant to. Else what’s the good of coming? 
Unexpected joys are always sweetest,” he made tran- 
quil answer. 

Teresa, damp and sticky and mosquito-bitten, 
shook her head. 

“Not when they make you jump out of your skin,” 
she replied. 

“It depends. Poor soul! You look as if you’d be 
better off without your skin,” Buddie told her 
quite frankly. “Anyhow, you’d be a whole lot 
prettier.” 

“What is the matter now?” Teresa asked, with 
a chastened sort of patience which struck on Buddie’s 
ears as something ominous. 

“Nothing much; only you’ve frescoed yourself 
with mud and strawberry juice till you look a trifle 
hectic, not to say heated. Jerusalem! What big 
berries ! It ought n’t to take more than a dozen to 
fill a basket.” 

“That’s all you know about it,” Teresa told him 
wearily, for she had struck a spot where the fruit 
was small and lean. 

“Here, give us a basket,” Buddie ordered. “I’ll 
race you, starting even.” 

“You’ll eat,” Teresa protested. 

“Not a one, ’cross my heart,” Buddie declared. 
“You need n’t be so stingy, though; there’s bushels 
here. I never saw such berries in my life.” 

“You see them, every day of your life,” Teresa 


108 


BUDDIE 


said contradictiously, for even under the lure of 
Buddie’s jollity, her sombre mood died hard. 

“How then? I was never here in my life,” Bud- 
die asserted, for the strawberry bed was in a remote 
corner of the Hamilton grounds and, so far as 
Buddie was aware, he had never penetrated to it 
before. 

“Miss Julia has them on her table, all the time.” 

“Honestly? Are these those?” Buddie queried, 
in rather involved phraseology. “Do you send 
them in to her like that?” 

“Yes. And she sends us out the money,” Teresa 
answered baldly. 

“Sell them?” 

“Yes. We aren’t millionaires.” A mosquito 
inside of Teresa’s ear was in part responsible for 
the invidious accent on the pronoun. 

“Neither are we. I wish we were, though,” 
Buddie said, with sudden gloom. 

Teresa forgot her mosquito in the interest of the 
next question. 

“What would you do then?” she demanded. 

Buddie’s reply surprised her by its fervour. She 
had not looked for it from his happy-go-lucky self. 

“Stop Daddy’s having to go off on this disgust- 
ing trip. If he were the father of a millionaire, he 
would n’t need to.” 

Teresa stopped her picking. 

“You miss him so much as that?” she queried. 

“Sure.” Buddie’s fingers never stopped their 
busy picking, and his eyes were on them, not on 
Teresa’s face. 

“But you know he’s coming back,” she said, 
with what she felt to be adequate encouragement. 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 109 

“So do you know the mosquitoes will stop biting, 
when the frost comes. That does n’t keep the bite 
from hurting now,” Buddie replied, with prompt 
allegory drawn from his immediate surroundings. 

“No; but — And Miss Julia is so good,” Teresa 
urged again. 

“So are the strawberries,” Buddie told her 
gloomily. “And yet, one can’t well use them for 
a plaster.” And then, all of a sudden, his sense of 
fun came back upon him, scattering his gloom. 
“Apparently, though,” he added; “that’s what you 
have been trying your best to do.” 

Teresa had the rare tact to accept the laugh 
against herself. 

“If I did, it doesn’t appear to have done much 
good,” she told him. “You don’t seem to think 
that it has improved my personal appearance.” 

“I’ve seen you worse,” he answered judicially. 

She laughed. 

“When?” 

“The morning we came home from circus.” 

Teresa flushed. 

“I was n’t smudgy then.” 

“No,” Buddie said candidly; “but you were 
awfully tousled, as if you had slept in all your 
things.” 

“So I had,” she confessed. “Buddie, now it’s all 
over, do you ever wish we hadn’t?” 

He shook his head slowly. 

“No; not really. But I’m not sure I’d do it 
over again.” 

“N-no.” Teresa’s tone was dubious. “Not if I 
could see the very end of all the consequences. 
Otherwise — - ” 


no 


BUDDIE 


There came a little pause. Buddie broke it. 

“I’d be willing to bet,” he said pensively; “that 
Aunt Julia talked it over with your mother and 
got points out of her, to know what to do about it 
when I got home. She’d never have thought it up, 
herself.” 

Teresa sighed, and her tone matched that of 
Buddie in its pensiveness. 

“Mother is very ingenious,” she said. 

It was a little later on that Buddie had made his 
statement concerning Miss Julia’s maternal possi- 
bilities. In the interval, the baskets had been filled, 
and then, at Buddie’s suggestion, two others. It 
seemed unlikely, measured by his present rate of 
progress, that Sandy would finish hoeing out the 
currant bushes in season to pick strawberries for 
dinner. Questioned, Sandy admitted that he did 
sit down quite often. The pebbles kept getting 
inside his shoes, he explained. If he did n’t take 
them out again at once, they would wear holes in 
his stockings, and so make work for mother. 

The reasoning was unassailable. It also went to 
prove that the motors of Sandy’s conscience still 
were working at full speed. Dropping further ques- 
tioning, Buddie recurred to the subject of Miss Julia, 
and, in the end, uttered his magnificent tribute, — 

“She’d make a ripping mother.” 

Settling back on her own weary heels, Teresa, 
spoke thoughtfully. 

“All the more pity that she is n’t,” she said. 

“I wonder how it happened,” Buddie remarked 
at nothing in particular. 

“ Happened !” Teresa’s voice sharpened just a 
little, 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 111 


“Yes.” Buddie spoke in tranquil unconscious- 
ness of any disrespect of womanhood. “That no 
man ever asked her.” 

Teresa fluffed up her feathers, and spoke like a 
militant suffragette. 

“What if he had?” she asked. 

“Why, she’d have married him, I suppose, and 
then,” forgetful of his earlier promise, Buddie chose 
out and picked and ate the fattest strawberry in 
sight; “then she’d have had a whole lot of chil- 
dren.” 

“How do you know she’d have married him?” 
Teresa asked as truculently as if the question had 
not seemed to concern itself with a purely imagin- 
ary he. 

“ Women always do.” 

“They don’t, then.” 

“Prove it,” said Buddie languidly, while his eye 
measured the rival attractions of the berries at his 
feet. 

“Miss Julia isn’t married,” Teresa told him, in 
a voice of triumph. 

“No; but—” 

“And she got asked.” The triumph grew. 

It grew still more, when she saw Buddie forget the 
berries and turn to stare at her with widening eyes. 

“For a fact?” 

“Yes.” 

“How do you know?” 

“She told my mother.” 

“How do you know? Did you listen?” 

Teresa’s colour came. 

“I don’t sneak, Buddie, Mother told me, of 
her own accord,” 


112 


BUDDIE 


“Oh.” Buddie’s face fell. “I didn’t think it 
of your mother. But go on.” 

Teresa shut her teeth upon a bitter memory. 
Then, rather than have her mother blamed unjustly, 
she spoke out. 

“It’s mean to corner me into telling you about 
it, Buddie; but, if I must — I got mad at Miss 
Julia, one day, for — Well, no matter what. She 
was n’t to blame. But I went home and told my 
mother she was a meddlesome old maid, and a 
whole lot of other things. Really, I was very mad. 
And then, after we had talked a long, long time, 
mother told me.” 

“Who was it?” Buddie asked her, as soon as he 
could discover a comma. 

Teresa shut her mouth with ostentatious tightness. 

“I promised my mother that his name should 
never cross my lips,” she said, when she opened it 
again. 

“Well, don’t tell it, then. But do I know him?” 

Teresa parried. 

“How should I know the people you know?” 

“Hh!” Buddie grunted. “Does he live around 
here?” 

“Not now.” 

“That means he used to,” Buddie made swift 
comment. 

“Of course,” Teresa said, a little injudiciously. 
“How else would she get acquainted with him?” 

“She goes to places; doesn’t she? And I sup- 
pose she must get acquainted with people, when 
she’s at them.” Then Buddie went off upon a fresh 
tack. “What’s the reason she did n’t marry him?” 
he demanded. 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 113 

“I suppose she didn’t care about it.” Teresa’s 
tone was slightly top-loftical. 

“Fudge! That’s no reason,” Buddie objected 
promptly. 

Teresa flopped forward on her knees, and, without 
a word, fell upon the berries and picked furiously. 
Buddie, still squatting on his heels, eyed her askance, 
and wondered what could be the meaning of this 
sudden devotion to her uncompleted task. He was 
merely a boy, and simple in his mental processes; 
he could not be expected to know that Teresa was 
bursting with her superior knowledge which was of 
no earthly use to her, unless she could display it 
and demand his respectful admiration. But, after 
her prelude of mystery and reticence, how could 
she display it, without apparent loss of dignity? 
Without in the least realizing her dilemma, Buddie 
supplied her with an exit from it. 

“Go on and tell, Teresa. I don’t leak. Besides, 
it’s fair that I should know, when I’m the only 
man about the place.” 

With apparent reluctance and actual delight, 
Teresa yielded. It seemed to her that Buddie’s 
final reason was a cogent one. 

“Well, perhaps,” she said. “Fill up your basket 
first, though, and then do come and sit in the shade 
while we cool off. It’s getting worse here, every 
single minute.” 

Obediently Buddie fell to work and, for an inter- 
val, their fingers flew. Not until their baskets were 
heaped, and they themselves were seated in the 
shade of a gigantic cherry tree, did Teresa speak 
again. 

“It was six or seven years ago,” she said slowly, 


114 


BUDDIE 


while she unpinned her hat and, putting it down 
beside her, lay back at ease upon the thick, soft 
grass. “He was very nice and very good-looking, 
mother says; and he loved Miss Julia with all his 
heart and soul and strength and — ” 

Buddie interrupted, with a flat question. 

“And didn’t Aunt Julia love him?” 

Despite the disadvantages of her position, pros- 
trate on the ground, Teresa nodded slowly. 

“That’s the most dramatic part of it all,” she 
said. “Mother thinks she did.” 

Buddie sat up, resting on one elbow. 

“Then why the dickens didn’t she marry him?” 
was his not unnatural question. 

“They were both so young; and she doubtless 
was afraid,” Teresa quite obviously was quoting 
now; “that he could not satisfy her later woman- 
hood.” 

Buddie waxed uncouth. Teresa always irritated 
him, when she became feminine and pompous. 

“Shucks!” he said. “Give it a name, Teresa; 
or else, cut it out.” 

“You asked me,” she reminded him. 

“I didn’t ask you to be so everlastingly high- 
falutin’. I wanted the bare facts,” he told her. 

Teresa sought to scourge him with her superior 
wisdom. 

“Bare facts are only the skeleton of any romance,” 
she observed, with her eyes upon the leaves above 
her head. 

“Romance be hanged! I want to know what 
Aunt Julia found wrong about the fellow. Did he 
drink?” 

"No; of course not.” 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 


115 


“Or smoke, or steal, or forget to black his boots, 
or drink out of his finger bowl?” Buddie made swift 
enumeration. “Don’t be a mule, Teresa. Now 
you’ve started, do tell it all, or nothing.” 

Teresa might have caught at the opportunity to 
point out to him that it was her plain duty to tell 
him nothing at all; but her desires were all the 
other way. Accordingly, — 

“How can I tell you, when you keep interrupt- 
ing?” she demanded. “No. It wasn’t any of the 
things you said. It was something far less common- 
place, something far less easy to live down.” 

Buddie closed his eyes and yawned, by way of 
hinting to Teresa that she seemed to him a little 
bit long-winded. 

“Fire ahead!” he bade her languidly. 

Teresa suppressed a vague desire to box his ears. 
She would have yielded to the desire, in all proba- 
bility, had it not been sure to prove an unromantic 
interruption to her tender theme. Therefore, she 
went on much in her former vein, her best vein, as 
it seemed to her. 

“Miss Julia is a lady — ” 

“Sure!” Buddie interrupted once again. 

Teresa ignored the interruption. 

“ — and he, poor man, was lowly born — ” 

“You don’t say!” Buddie rolled over to face 
her, in his sudden interest. “Was he a plumber, 
or what?” 

Teresa repressed her growing impatience. Always 
it had seemed to her that this early romance of Miss 
Julia held within it all the elements that go to the 
making of a successful novel. It was hard indeed, 
the first time that it fell from her lips, to have it 


116 


BUDDIE 


meet with this kind of a reception. Sometimes a 
downright, practical demand for information is 
more disheartening by far than any criticism. 
Once more she assumed the weapon of her inherent 
superiority, the superiority of any girl to any boy 
of her own age, or younger. 

“How foolish you are, Buddie!” she rebuked him. 
“Miss Julia would n’t know a plumber, unless when 
he was lying on his stomach in her pipes. No; this 
man was in the insurance business; but he had a 
little money, and was most refined, most. But, even 
then, Miss Julia felt she could n’t.” 

“Could n’t what?” 

“Marry him, you — ” Teresa hesitated, as she 
chose her shot with care. Then, “you funny child!” 
she said. 

Disdainful of the shot, which failed to penetrate 
his mental skin, Buddie rolled over on both his el- 
bows and spoke at the grass. 

“I don’t see why not,” he said. 

“All of her friends were college people, or else pro- 
fessional: bishops and that sort of thing,” Teresa 
explained down to him, with no little condescension. 

“What of that?” 

“And he was n’t.” 

“I don’t believe it,” Buddie burst out illogically. 
“Anyhow, there must have been some other reason.” 

Teresa shook her head. 

“I don’t believe there was, for Miss Julia cried, 
when she told my mother; and, if she’d felt sure the 
reason was a good one, she ’d have been ashamed to 
cry,” she told Buddie, with a logic far better than 
she was aware. 

“Then — Perhaps, some day — ” Then Buddie 


IN THE STRAWBERRY BED 117 

made a fresh start. “What became of him?” he 
demanded. 

“He went out west,” Teresa answered vaguely. 

“What for?” 

“To bury his sorrow, I suppose.” Again Teresa 
sought the dialect of the romancer. 

“More likely to make his fortune, or study a pro- 
fession, and then come back and marry her off hand,” 
Buddie retorted prosaically. 

There was a little silence. Then Buddie spoke out 
again. 

“If that’s what ailed him, what about Mr. Bald- 
win?” he demanded. “He’s in the real estate busi- 
ness, and she asks him out to dinner.” 

“Mr. Baldwin is an author. He calls himself a 
sociolo-some thing, and writes things about boys,” 
Teresa explained severely. 

Buddie sat up eagerly. 

“Bet you he is n’t a professional,” he assured his 
companion. “A professional does things for money; 
that ’s why the college teams are n’t any better, you 
know. Mr. Baldwin does n’t write his things for 
money, only for the fun of hearing himself go off.” 

“How do you know?” Teresa demanded, in her 
turn. 

Buddie bestowed upon her the cold glance of his 
disapproving scorn. 

“For a bright girl, Teresa, you do make an awful 
goose of yourself sometimes,” he chid her. “Mr. 
Baldwin does n’t sell his things, because nobody 
would be fool enough to buy them. He’s probably 
a good deal more than satisfied to get them house 
room for nothing.” 

Teresa waived the question. 


118 


BUDDIE 


“Anyhow, she did n’t know him till years after- 
ward,” she said. And then she lifted up her voice 
in sisterly rebuke. “Sandy! Alexander Hamilton! 
You just put that book in your pocket, and go back 
to work!” she ordered, with a swift lapse from her 
unaccustomed mood of romance. 

But Buddie went his homeward way, silent and 
very thoughtful. The romance of Miss Julia was 
furnishing him with food for meditation, then, and 
long afterwards. According to Buddie’s loyal mind, 
the simple justice of the universe should see to it that 
Miss Julia’s life should be kept free from all regrets. 
Else, what was the use of being so good to other 
people, and to dogs like Ebenezer, who sucked her pet 
white cat into a sodden ball of dingy, tangled fur? 


CHAPTER TEN 


VACATION 

I T was during the vacation time, curiously enough, 
that the studious Eric had his innings, the gay 
vacation time of summer when most of all one would 
have looked on him as candidate for Coventry. In- 
stead, once the first days of irresponsible idleness 
were at an end, fun dragged a little, became unsatis- 
factory. Amusement lagged, when one had nothing 
in the world to do but to amuse one’s self. Lacking 
the spur of inward conscience and outward opposi- 
tion, even Buddie’s inventiveness began to fail, and 
both he and Teresa confessed that Sandy’s bubbling 
stream of prankishness began to bore them. And 
then Teresa had applied herself to her hated needle 
and begun a piece of embroidery which, she confided 
to her mother, would turn into a nightie just ex- 
actly like the ones they bought in Paris. 

Buddie, meanwhile, bored by Sandy and forsaken 
by Teresa, betook himself in search of Eric. His 
original intention had been to mock at Eric’s hob- 
bies and, with the assistance of the willing Ebenezer, 
to put to flight the rabble of beasts and birds with 
which Eric loved to surround himself. Instead, find- 
ing Eric enthroned as king over a perfect colony of 
turtles, box and snapping and plain mud, Buddie 
fell a victim to their charms, and invited himself to 
a seat upon the throne at Eric’s side, with Ebenezer, 


120 


BUDDIE 


an unwilling captive, held fast between his clasping 
knees. Moreover, so great became his interest in 
the behaviour of the piebald colony spread out before 
him that, before he realized it, he had passed from 
amused exclamation into animated question, and 
Eric was expounding at top speed. That was the 
beginning of the mischief. Before the week was 
ended, Buddie was lying in the grass, flat, at Eric’s 
side, watching a golden-throated oriole in the tree 
above his head. 

“You’d better come with us, to-morrow,” he ad- 
vised Teresa, that same night. “Really, once you 
get a little used to him, Eric is n’t so bad a bore as 
one would think. Anyhow, it’s better than sitting 
in-doors, this weather, and sewing holes into a piece 
of cloth.” 

Teresa sighed a little. In her heart, she was com- 
ing to agree with Buddie that, in a world so full of 
interesting things, all made and only waiting to be 
understood and admired, the slow creation of French 
lingerie nighties was a weariness to the flesh and a 
total superfluity as well. Nevertheless, Teresa was 
loath to confess that she had been wasting time and 
cloth and eyesight on the flimsy, dainty things; the 
more so as, at the start, the boys with one accord had 
denounced them as “girl duds,” and as “piffling 
nonsense.” Accordingly, she effected a compromise 
and, joining Buddie and Eric in their explorations, 
took her work afield. Her theory, stated in advance, 
was that she could work, while they waited for things 
to happen. As a matter of fact, her sewing gathered 
grime and bits of woodland green far, far more swiftly 
than it gathered stitches; and Teresa’s mother, look- 
ing on in silence, came to the accurate conclusion 


VACATION 


121 

that it spent a good deal larger portion of its time 
underneath her daughter’s placid head than between 
her daughter’s active hands. However, Mrs. Ham- 
ilton was wise. At Teresa’s age, it seemed to her, 
it was far better to lie on one’s back and watch things 
grow and flutter in the sun, and listen to Eric’s wise 
expoundings, than it was to sit, a crumpled little 
bundle of muscles, and weary one’s young eyes and 
nerves by setting even the daintiest of stitches in 
even the finest cloth. Time for that, later on. At 
fifteen, a girl should grow, and breathe, and real- 
ize the beauty and the wisdom of the world around 
her. 

Not all of the summer daylight, though, by any 
means, was spent in lying prone upon the grass. Only 
two miles distant was the bay, choppy and salt, but 
safe except in hours of violent storm. Buddie’s sum- 
mers at the real seashore had taught him to swim 
almost as soon as he could walk; and, for his years, 
he was an expert boatman. Accordingly and obedi- 
ent to a hint in one of Daddy’s letters. Miss Julia had 
given him a boat, a green-and-white, slim little dory 
which he named The Julia , in prompt gratitude. 
The first day out, with her for his sole passenger, he 
had proved to her, past all gainsaying, that he was 
master of the art of rowing. The next day after, 
perchance in grateful remembrance of her own pre- 
servation from the perils of the sea, Miss Julia had 
made over to him the key of a small green boathouse 
which possessed the extra charm of a pair of cubby 
holes that could be used as dressing-rooms. From 
that time on, Buddie’s bliss was quite complete; 
and, in a slightly less degree, so was the bliss of Eric 
and Teresa. Sandy was out of it completely. He 


m 


BUDDIE 


hated swimming, and he was so reckless that, after 
a time or two, Buddie refused to have him in the 
boat. Therefore Sandy, scorning to lament, went 
his way with the other boys, and left the older trio 
to their own devices. 

And great devices they were, too. There were 
swimming matches, in the mornings; there were 
diving contests, and games of tag when the one “it” 
swam under water, and the other ones caught him 
by his splashing. At the first, Teresa could float a 
little and Eric could swim a paltry dozen strokes. 
By the end of the first week, under Buddie’s skilful 
instruction and goaded by his merciless “dares,” 
they were well-nigh as fearless as their master, and 
quite as strong. 

In the boat, the story was the same. Teresa, after 
catching her first inevitable crab or two, developed 
a smooth, strong stroke, while Eric delighted in the 
steering which he reduced to a set of mathematical 
propositions that centred in the sun and the north 
star. Unhappily, however, the star part had to 
remain pure theory, for Miss Julia had laid down 
one steadfast rule: the boat must be locked up 
inside the boathouse, at least one hour before the 
sun set. 

In all these pleasures, Ebenezer took an active 
share. Out in the woods, he returned, breathless, 
from little forays, his jaws distended with his trove. 
Sometimes he brought back only puffy oakballs or 
knobby bits of wood to lay down at his master’s feet. 
Sometimes he happened on a turtle, or a young green 
frog, or a furry fieldmouse, and once, with every 
manifestation of anxious care, he laid a half-grown 
chicken into Buddie’s lap, and then backed off and 


VACATION 123 

barked out his apologies for having yielded to temp- 
tation. 

When the three of them put on their bathing suits, 
Ebenezer became well-nigh hysterical in his joy. He 
knew it would be his place to act as umpire in the 
swimming matches, scrabbling up and down the 
shore in the warm, wet brown sand, or prancing out 
ecstatically into the edge of the waves, to greet and 
congratulate his young master, as he came striding 
up to him from the sea. And then, when they lay 
in the sand to rest and gossip, it was Ebenezer’s turn 
to be the centre of attraction. It was Ebenezer whom 
they buried in the sand, until, of a sudden, he sprang 
up and shook himself, and covered them completely 
with the flying grains. It was Ebenezer who dug 
out their deepest wells, and broke through their 
highest dams, and sat down ruthlessly upon their 
most successful tunnels; Ebenezer who, weary of 
the fun, curled himself up across Buddie’s bare and 
sunburned legs and took his forty winks, while the 
others decided what would be the best thing to do, 
next but one. But, in the boat, he was a different 
Ebenezer, wide-eyed and thoughtful, with a look 
of wonder on his great gray face, as he watched the 
shining sea slide past him. From the first day on, 
there had been no need for Buddie to chide him for 
his restlessness. Ebenezer’s wise gray head seemed 
quite able to grasp the fact that he who would go 
boating must needs sit very still. And sit he did, 
not lie down at his ease and sleep, for, lying, he would 
have lost his outlook on the summer sea. 

And so it came about that, as the summer waxed 
and waned, the slim green boat, The Julia , became 
a well-known sight about the bay, always with its 


124 


BUDDIE 


same crew: the grave-eyed Eric at the helm, Buddie 
and Teresa at the oars, and, in the bow, the great 
gray dog, erect and vigilant. 

Daddy, meanwhile, appeared to be spending the 
summer at the beck and call of a whimsical patient 
whose soul was set on solitude. At least, so Buddie 
reasoned from his frequent letters. At first the letters 
had come from the heart of the Adirondacks. Then, 
as the summer advanced and the heat increased, 
they came out of eastern Canada, a region vaguely 
described by Daddy as “the country back of Lake 
Saint John.” From all accounts, it was a region 
rich in the resources which make the summer life 
worth while: canoes, and fishing, and big game. 
Daddy’s letters were full of vague allusions to all 
these things; yet, when it came down to the literal 
fact, Buddie could never discover that he actually 
did tfeem. That set him to wondering a little. He 
wondered even more when, early in July, Daddy 
wrote with apparent pleasure that he was growing 
fat, Daddy who always had prided himself upon his 
gray hound sort of leanness. However, the letters 
sounded quite contented, save for their inevitable 
expressions of regret at missing Buddie; and won- 
derings, at healthy fourteen, by no means always 
are the same as worry. 

Twice every week, once by promise, once as a 
a sort of postscript dictated solely by his own desires, 
Buddie wrote to his absent father. The letters were 
chaotic in phrase, and they contained more ink than 
was absolutely needful; but as they also contained 
a full and accurate record of Buddie’s doings, they 
were none the less welcome for all that. Buddie 
wrote about Sandy, and the circus, and the brook, 


VACATION 


125 


and Eric, and Teresa, and the boathouse, and the 
new teeth of little Tootles. To save himself descrip- 
tion, he relied largely upon illustration, plans of the 
school, and the playhouse kitchen, and even of little 
Tootles’s lower jaw; pictures of Ebenezer, with Pet- 
Lamb’s tail dangling from among his whiskers; 
pictures of Miss Julia drinking tea, with Pet-Lamb 
also drinking tea in the chair beside her; pictures 
galore of Teresa in all sorts of occupations, pictures 
recognizable only by the two long tails of hair which 
invariably formed the decorative portion of the 
sketch. And the letter always ended with one un- 
changing phrase, — 

“ Do hurry home again. I ’m happy here; but I ’m half- 
dead to see you, 

Your sincerely, 

Buddie. 

OOOOOOO (Kisses)” 

And the kisses straggled crazily to the very bottom 
of the page. 

Truly, Buddie’s intimacy with his father was suf- 
fering in no way by their separation. 

That was the summer, as it chanced, of the first 
wave of the rising tide of the boy scout movement, 
the tide that, sweeping downward out of Canada, 
was carrying in its wake a sea of boyish devotion to 
all sorts of new ideals. At another hint from Daddy, 
Buddie had been among the first to take the simple 
oath of obedience and honour and helpfulness to all 
one’s weaker brethren, beast or human. He set the 
fashion; Eric promptly sealed it. By the last days of 
July, they -were the ranking officers of a promising 
corps of scouts; and a retired West Pointer, invalided 


126 


BUDDIE 


in some Indian scrimmage or other, had volunteered 
to take the new corps in hand and see how he could 
make them like it. 

After the manner of his training, he put the scouts 
upon a warlike basis, with drills in the present, and 
a hint of rifle competition yet to come. They took 
to it, as ducks to water. It was novel and interest- 
ing and, best of all, the interest did not wane. The 
retired West Pointer added a weekly lesson in mili- 
tary tactics and talked vaguely about target practise, 
once the weather cooled. As a natural result, the 
enthusiasm of the boys mounted to fever heat. It 
even held to its temperature under the chilling dis- 
covery that the retired West Pointer was going to 
make the target practise depend, not upon their 
military drill, but on the way they held to the moral 
oaths that they had taken. 

“Not for reward, boys,” he had told them curtly. 
“It’s only just that no fellow should be expected to 
shoot straight, unless he can live straight. It’s all- 
round straightness that you scouts are after. That’s 
all. Break ranks ! ” 

Teresa cavilled loudly at the organizing of the 
scouts. Always, heretofore, she had made it at once 
her duty and her pleasure to do all the things the 
boys did and, furthermore, to do them well. Here 
at last was something they could do, from which 
she, of palpable necessity, was excluded. It was the 
first real grievance of her life, and she not only took 
it hard, but, contrary to her usual self-reliant custom, 
she also took it to her mother. To her disappoint- 
ment, she found her mother too much absorbed in 
the increasing toothiness of little Tootles’s gums 
and the consequently increasing instability of little 


VACATION 


m 


Tootles’s temper, especially by night, to be a wholly 
sympathetic confidante. Accordingly, Teresa went, 
the next day, to Miss Julia. 

Miss Julia’s sympathy proved to be everything of 
which a girlish heart could dream. She asked just 
questions enough to show that she was fully inter- 
ested; but not enough to suggest that perhaps she 
could not understand. Then she explained to Teresa 
what a help to the world at large the scouts were 
bound to be, not in case of war especially, but for 
every one in trouble, or weak, or needing to talk 
things over and be advised. And then she went on 
to speak of the girls’ share in helping on such things, 
to talk about relief-corps work, and to tell about 
certain money-getting fairs which had been the 
social events of certain war-times. 

Afterwards, Teresa went her way, grateful, 
thoughtful. There was a meeting of all the girls, 
that same afternoon, at the playhouse. Four days 
later, Teresa was able to announce triumphantly 
that, the Thursday but one before school opened, 
the girls were going to have a fair upon Miss Julia’s 
lawn, and that the proceeds of the fair were to be 
given to the boy scouts, as nest-egg of a fund to buy 
their rifles. 

“I say,” Buddie remarked reflectively, when the 
announcement reached his ears; “I must say it’s 
awfully decent of Teresa to do this.” 

Miss Julia smiled out at the summer darkness 
which, on such nights as these, replaced the fire as 
setting for their bed-time confidences. 

“I think it is, Buddie,” she agreed. “Moreover, 
you boys have n’t any notion how hard it was for 
her to see the justice of it.” 


128 


BUDDIE 


“Of?” Buddie said inquiringly. 

“Of her being left out of the thing itself.” 

“But she could n’t. She’s a girl,” Buddie argued 
placidly. 

“Exactly. Later, she’ll like it. Now, though, 
she takes it as a limitation, as one would take some 
sort of a disease. On that account, it’s all the finer 
of her, Buddie, to take it as it comes, and to go to 
work to help you on with the very thing she’d love 
to do, but can’t.” 

There came a thoughtful silence. Then, — 

“Sure!” said Buddie, and his voice expressed full 
conviction. 

Miss Julia let the silence continue for a little longer. 

“Perhaps that’s one of the places where your 
oath comes in,” she suggested finally. 

Buddie, squatting at her feet, with Ebenezer 
beside him and Pet-Lamb upon his knickerbockered 
knee, looked up, with manifest perplexity writ large 
upon his snub-nosed countenance. 

“I don’t see it,” he confessed. 

“No?” Miss Julia queried. “Granted the girls are 
out of it, Buddie, entirely out of it, is n’t it for you 
scouts to make it up to them, in some way or other, 
for the good times that they are losing?” Then 
she changed her theme and, with her theme, her 
accent. Even four little months’ experience of 
Buddie had taught her that it was best to leave 
ideas to work their own way home to him, not for 
her to seek to drive them. “Buddie,” she asked, 
with abrupt alertness; “have you ever heard me 
say anything about Ethel Davenport?” 

“Not that I know of,” Buddie answered, with 
supreme indifference. 


VACATION 


129 


“She is my cousin’s child. It’s on my father’s 
side, and so no real relation to you,” Miss Julia 
explained. “She lives in Philadelphia, and is 
about your age, perhaps a little older. Anyway, 
she’s a bright girl, and a good one, and I’m sure 
you will like her.” 

“How can I?” Buddie inquired lazily, as he 
settled back upon his elbow and watched a be- 
lated firefly aimlessly flitting to and fro. “My 
liking does n’t go off by wireless, Aunt Julia; it 
has to have a track to run on, or else it stays at 
home.” 

Miss Julia laughed. 

“Then I’ll be track,” she volunteered. “Ethel 
always comes here for a week or two in August, 
and I am going to send for her, next week.” 

To Miss Julia’s great surprise, Buddie’s first 
question did not concern himself. 

<4 How does she pull with Teresa?” he demanded. 

Strangely enough, his demand struck full to the 
heart of a situation to which Miss Julia had been 
vainly hoping to keep him blind. 

“They don’t know each other very well,” she 
evaded. 

“That’s queer. Staying next house to each 
other, and the same age, and all,” Buddie made 
reflective comment. “Still, girls are queer fish, 
anyway.” 

Miss Julia judged it would be better to ignore the 
slander to her sex. For the present, she had more 
personal interests at stake. 

“Teresa has been away from home, once or 
twice,” she evaded again. “Besides, she is so busy 
with the boys and at home.” 


130 


BUDDIE 


“What’s your Ethel like?” Buddie asked, heedless 
of her hard-sought evasion. 

“Pretty, and with very nice manners.” 

“Hh! Can she swim?” 

“I — I suppose so,” Miss Julia replied, a little 
bit untruthfully. As a matter of fact, it never 
had occurred to her to suppose anything about it, 
one way or the other. 

“Like dogs?” Buddie cast one arm across Eben- 
ezer, as he put the question. 

“She was very nice to Pet-Lamb.” 

“Hh!” Buddie said again. “Does she know any- 
thing about baseball?” 

“Really, I never thought to ask her, Ernest,” 
Miss Julia confessed, her mental perturbation caus- 
ing her to hark back to the baptismal name which 
Buddie had hoped was for ever dead between them, 
save in the stressful moments which had to do with 
discipline. 

Buddie heaved a sigh so portentous that Eben- 
ezer, even in his dreams, felt it incumbent upon 
himself to echo it. 

“Then what is she good for?” he demanded 
ruthlessly. “For my part, Aunt Julia, I want a 
girl to be something besides an animated clothes- 
peg. That’s where Teresa scores.” 

“But, if Ethel comes — ” Miss Julia was beginning. 

Buddie squared his shoulders. Then he squared 
his jaw. 

“If she comes, she comes, and I’ll stand by and 
do my duty like a man and — ” he laughed a 
little; “and a boy scout. That does n’t mean 
I’m promising to like her, though. It’s only that 
you can count on me to be moderately decent 


VACATION 131 

to her for your sake, and to tolerate her for my 
own.” 

And, upon that meagre promise, Miss Julia was 
forced to rest. Buddie took himself away to bed, 
once his fiat had gone forth. Next day, and in the 
next days after, he disdained to refer to the matter, 
even to Teresa. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


sandy’s surprise party 

“ A/f ISS JULIA ? ” Sandy’s countenance was shin- 
ing-clean, and smug with meekness withal. 
Indeed, even apart from the fact that, as a rule, he 
was shy of penetrating within Miss Julia’s radius, 
the unaccustomed combination of meekness and 
soap would have assured her that he had come to 
her to supplicate some long-desired favour. 

“Yes, Sandy.” 

Sandy edged a step nearer, for Miss Julia’s tone 
was encouraging. 

“Miss Julia, it’s going to be vacation pretty soon,” 
he announced, with every appearance of confiding 
to her Things of Import. 

“Yes, I know. Aren’t you sorry?” But, even 
as she spoke, Miss Julia became uncomfortably 
aware of the triteness of the joke. 

Sandy responded with a dignity which might well 
have rebuked her. 

“Yes, Miss Julia. I like my school,” he told her, 
with stern solemnity. 

“That’s right, Sandy,” Miss Julia answered 
swiftly, feeling herself, the while, an uncomfortable 
compromise between a guileless, trusting babe and 
a doting exponent of senile maxims. “I wish 
Ernest shared your views.” 

Sandy again spoke solemnly. 


SANDY’S SURPRISE PARTY 


133 


“I am afraid that Ernest isn’t very studious, 
Miss Julia. He does n’t seem to realize that he 
can’t always be a boy and have the chance to go to 
school.” 

This time. Miss Julia’s gravity deserted her entirely. 

“Sandy, you rascal!” she said. And then they 
both laughed madly, and the ice was broken. 

“After all, you know,” Sandy resumed confiden- 
tially, after an hilarious interval; “I meant about 
what I said. We fellows can’t be young but once, 
and I believe in making the most of it. That 
Ernest Angell of yours,” in Buddie’s absence, 
Sandy spoke the tabooed name with infinite gusto; 
“ is beginning to think about growing up. More fool 
he! The fun is now, not when we move into white 
ties and whiskers.” 

Miss Julia looked sharply across at the urchin 
balanced on the verandah railing. It had not 
occurred to her that Buddie was impatient to grow 
up, and she wondered if she had been lacking in 
perception. 

“What makes you think so, Sandy?” she inquired. 

“A fellow in white chin whiskers couldn’t shin 
up a tree; he’d step on them,” Sandy responded, as 
he hooked his toes into the railing. 

“No. I meant about his wanting to grow up.” 

“Who? Ernest Angell? Oh, he was saying, only 
just the other day, that he was going to have long 
trousers, his next birthday. I told him he was so 
fat and chunky that he’d look like Peter on the 
signboards; . but he said he did n’t mind. Bet he 
did, though.” Sandy chuckled. 

“Who is Peter?” Miss Julia asked, out of the 
darkness of her ignorance. 


134 


BUDDIE 


Sandy stared. 

“Don’t you know? Not honest? Peter’s the 
monkey on the stage, the one that does things, 
dressed up like a man. I almost went to see him, 
last year, only I turned out to be five cents short,” 
Sandy explained. Then he recurred to the original 
reason for his call. “Miss Julia!” he said explo- 
sively. 

And once again Miss Julia’s answer was encour- 
aging. 

“Yes, Sandy.” 

This time, Sandy made a desperate rush across 
the threshold of his subject. 

“Miss Julia, may we boys give Buddie a sur- 
prise?” he queried. “We’re awful fond of him, you 
know.” 

“What sort of a surprise?” Miss Julia asked him, 
smiling in a fashion that Sandy found as promising 
as any verbal assent she could have given. 

“Why, a party, of course. Come, some evening, 
and bring our supper.” 

“But couldn’t I give you supper?” she ques- 
tioned, just a little rashly. 

“Not if you didn’t know when we were coming. 
Besides,” Sandy added; “he’d be sure to smell 
things.” 

“ He could n’t, if I had them cooked when he was 
out of the house.” 

Sandy eyed her in swift disdain for the purely 
literal workings of her feminine intellect. 

“I meant rats,” he said exasperatedly; “not just 
the cakes and pies.” 

Miss Julia withdrew her part of the suggestion, 
not only by reason of Sandy’s exasperation, but 


SANDY'S SURPRISE PARTY 


135 


also because of her own sheer inability to plan a 
party menu which should include a pie. Instead, — 

“Who would come, Sandy?" she asked him. 

“All us boys." 

“Any girls?" 

Sandy wrinkled his nose, in token of disgust. 

“We want some fun," he said conclusively. 

“Oh." Miss Julia did not mean to be snippy; 
but this was the only reply she could evolve to fit 
the emergency. 

Sandy’s face changed swiftly. 

“Oh, you can come," he reassured her. “We’ll 
put a big chair in a corner, and let you look on and 
be judge of all the forfeits, just as they always do 
with the grandmother at the parties in the library 
books." Sandy’s accent suggested, by the way, 
that library books were a class apart, written to fill 
shelves rather than to be read. Then he swept on, 
“Of course, Miss Julia, we wouldn’t turn you out, 
in your own house, and, if you wanted to go to bed 
a little early, we’d try not to make too great a row, 
downstairs." 

“When do you want to come, Sandy?" Miss 
Julia asked him, after a silent interval, and her 
tone assured her anxious guest that her consent was 
tacitly pledged to the outworking of his plan. 

“Oh, some day before very long. I’ll talk it up 
with the other fellows, as soon as I can get them 
together, without Buddie’s being around. No; I 
can’t stop any longer. Good night, and thank you 
lots." And Sandy, converting the end of his spine 
into a pivot, swung himself about, dropped on the 
grass below the rail and vanished into the thick, 
soft darkness of the summer night. 


136 


BUDDIE 


This was a week before the beginning of vacation, 
a week when Miss Julia held herself, in mind and 
larder, braced for a boyish invasion at almost any 
hour. The evenings passed away, however, with- 
out any such invasion being made; and Ebenezer 
waxed fat upon the goodies surreptitiously poked 
into his all-devouring mouth, when Buddie was not 
by to see. 

Then school closed and, a week later, came the 
little boat, The Julia , which to a great extent marked 
a temporary separation between Sandy and his 
energetic mates, and Buddie. There was no quarrel, 
no actual coolness. It was merely that they went 
their ways, apart. To Miss Julia, watching, indeed 
it seemed that Sandy took the matter very well, 
regretting, but not resenting in the least, his prac- 
tical exclusion from the summer interests of Buddie. 
And Sandy, Miss Julia felt convinced, was neither 
dense, nor fickle. He made the best of things, and 
took what came to him ungrumblingly, trying to 
make the things he had, do duty for all the things 
he wanted. 

However, all things considered, Miss Julia was 
not in the least surprised that Sandy’s party failed 
to materialize. Indeed, even with her imperfect 
knowledge of the workings of the boyish mind, she 
felt convinced that, in the place of Sandy, she would 
not waste her energies in getting up joyous sur- 
prises for the faithless Buddie. For, albeit Miss 
Julia agreed with Buddie that it would be inadvis- 
able to allow Sandy to upset the boat and drown 
himself and Ebenezer in the bay, she yet regretted 
a little the separation growing up between the 
boys. Still, she was wise enough not to try to 


SANDY’S SURPRISE PARTY 137 

argue them back into their old intimacy. Time 
and circumstance could do that thing; but never 
spoken words. She merely rejoiced in secret, when 
the organization of the scouts brought the two 
youngsters under the rule of the selfsame hobby. 
Miss Julia’s conscience assured her glibly that it 
was her duty to prefer the earnest Eric to that 
freakish imp, his brother. Unhappily, though, one’s 
conscience rarely creates one’s real likings. Miss 
Julia was aware that Eric’s influence on her nephew 
was always for the best. She smiled on him in 
courteous approbation; but she smiled with Sandy. 

Teresa, meanwhile, was becoming a daily guest 
upon Miss Julia’s verandah. The fair was now an 
established fact. Each afternoon, a bevy of girls 
were toiling in the playhouse, laying their plans, 
the while they stitched away at all manner of gay 
trifles which, as they fondly hoped, would sell like 
the traditional hot cakes. Teresa was the head and 
front of the whole undertaking. She took the hon- 
ours of her leadership most joyously, and yet she 
would have been the first one of them all to admit 
that Miss Julia was the power behind the throne. 

Since one summer which had begun to write its 
history in gold and had ended in a blackened, blotted 
page torn off all suddenly and half-way down, Miss 
Julia Tenney had known no such absorbing interest 
as she now felt in the approaching fair. In the 
intervening years, she had tasted the luxuries of 
life, nibbling daintily at one and then another: 
society, sports, clubs, charities. She had enjoyed 
them mildly, but never to excess. Now, suddenly 
swept from the placid point of view born of her 
thirty-one years, she was astounded to feel the 


138 


BUDDIE 


enthusiasms of sixteen surging up within her. It 
was a wholly new sensation to sit up half the night, 
deciding whether brown velvet or green would be 
better for the bodies of the butterfly penwipers; to 
feed Pet-Lamb sweet biscuits with one hand and 
sketch her profile with the other, to get her outline 
for the pussy holders which ought to be on the tea 
table of every spinster in town. It was something 
unusual for Miss Julia to ignore the scorching sun 
of the August mornings, and ransack the shops in 
town, with Teresa at her side, hunting for bargain 
ends of silk and ribbon, for dainty or practical odds 
and ends that could be bought for three cents and 
sold for ten; hunting and hunting, above all, for 
new and usable ideas. 

Morning after morning, all these hot August days. 
Miss Julia hurried through her letters and her morn- 
ing Times , while Teresa scrabbled through the morn- 
ing tasks upon which Mrs. Hamilton insisted. Then 
together, sometimes sitting upon Miss Julia’s wide 
verandah in the shade, sometimes setting out for 
scorching trips to town, the two of them attacked 
the problems of the fair, approving or modifying 
the old plans and developing others wholly new. 

Buddie, as a rule, claimed a good share of Miss 
Julia’s evenings. Nowadays, they often spent them 
in poring over catalogues of targets and of miniature 
rifles, studying the pictures and conning the price 
lists. Miss Julia’s older friends, meanwhile, were 
loud in their complaints over the fact that now she 
had no time for them. She had little leisure for 
bridge, still less for consideration of the objects of 
her sub-committee of the Civic Club. At teatime, 
of course, her welcome never failed them; but what 


SANDY’S SURPRISE PARTY 


139 


pleasure was there in drinking tea on the verandah, 
with a great lubberly dog standing at one’s elbow, 
waiting to pick up the crumbs, and with a noisy 
game of baseball in progress out on the lawn below? 
However, even the most dissatisfied one of all Miss 
Julia’s former cronies was forced to confess to her 
own mirror that Julia Tenney was looking ridicu- 
lously young, that summer, despite the dozen obvious 
freckles that dappled her Grecian nose. 

In this verdict Ethel Davenport agreed, when 
Miss Julia met her at the station, on the day of her 
arrival. Miss Julia was looking uncommonly well 
and happy and young, that day, in her soft white 
lawn and lace, in her wide white hat with its pink 
roses. Buddie was with her, and Buddie had been 
behaving like a veritable imp, all the way in town. 
Miss Julia’s mirth was still in her eyes, and it added 
to her look of girlishness. And Ethel, who was tired 
and hot and dusty, and whose ideal was of prim, 
unruffled neatness, saw the change in Miss Julia, 
and did not approve. 

Ethel Davenport was a Philadelphian, and she 
looked her name and her abiding-place. After that, 
there is no especial need of further description. As 
Miss Julia had said, she was almost fifteen and very 
pretty, and her manners were so good as to seem a 
little bit discouraging. Buddie looked her over 
swiftly, swiftly retired into his shell, and limited his 
later talk to monosyllables. Between the mono- 
syllables, however, he gained a swift understanding of 
the exact reason that Ethel Davenport had never 
known Teresa. Indeed, by the time that they had 
reached the house, Buddie had also reached the 
point of uncomfortable wonderings whether, indeed. 


140 


BUDDIE 


Ethel would ever have known himself, had it not 
been for the social requirements born of spending 
two weeks under the same roof. 

Miss Julia, meanwhile, was watching the two of 
them with feelings closely akin to fear. Most of all, 
strange to say, her fear centred itself in Buddie. She 
had never seen him in that mood before, and yet 
she knew it but too well : his father’s mood, assumed 
as a sort of protective armour in the presence of 
strangers whom he felt no especial wish to like, or 
even to attract, a mood of cool, critical aloofness, 
as courteous as it was full of a supreme indifference. 
This was a new Buddie, a veritable Ernest Angell. 
Miss Julia could pick no flaw in his manner; neverthe- 
less, she dreaded the out- workings of his mood. More 
than all else, she dreaded the possibility of its being 
turned upon herself. 

To her own surprise, moreover, Miss Julia was 
finding Ethel a little bit of a disappointment. Asked, 
she could have told no reason why. The girl was 
just as pretty as ever and as dainty; her manners 
showed the same cool, precocious self-possession 
which always had charmed Miss Julia in past years. 
Now, though, a good deal of the old charm was 
lacking. Miss Julia wondered quite uneasily whether 
the change could be in herself. Was Ethel just the 
same, and was it that she herself had altered, had 
lowered her standards just a very little? Was it by 
reason of her close association with such irrepressible 
youngsters as Buddie and the Hamiltons? Miss 
Julia shuddered at her image in the glass, the while 
she put the question. Awful if she should allow her- 
self to deteriorate! Awful if she should forget the 
claims of her more than thirty years, and, in her 


SANDY’S SURPRISE PARTY 


141 


deterioration, become a senile hoyden! With stoic 
hands, she hung up in her closet the pale pink frock 
she had laid out for dinner, and, with a mind as stoic, 
she hunted out another frock of silver gray, with 
violet bows and a demure tucker of white muslin. 
Alas for poor Miss Julia! In the pale gray frock, 
she looked a girl of the ’teens masquerading as a 
Quaker, and not at all the sort of thing she had 
intended. 

Buddie met her on the stairs, admired her and, 
after his wont, gave tongue to his admiration. 

“I say. Aunt Julia, that’s corking!” he reported, 
after a detailed inspection of the violet bows. “You 
look sixteen, and no end ’cute. But what’s the 
dress-up for? Are you going to have a party?” 

Miss Julia laughed and shook her head. 

“No party, Buddie,” she told him. “It’s only 
that we have an extra guest, you know, so hurry 
and beautify yourself. Else, you’ll be late.” 

And Buddie went. 

He reappeared in due season, starched and scoured, 
his hated dinner jacket on his back and his feet shod 
in patent leather pumps, while around him floated 
an aggressive aroma of violet. His manner matched 
the elegance of his attire, so unfamiliar was it, and 
so very, very formal. It lent a stateliness, indeed, 
to the whole dinner, and it made Miss Julia feel un- 
comfortably conscious of her lack of silver covers 
and of British footmen. 

Half through the serving of the cheese, there came 
a muffled murmur from outside. Then the bell rang 
once, twice, thrice, and very violently. 

Miss Julia nodded to Lena, and Lena vanished in 
the direction of the front door. The murmur, stilled 


142 


BUDDIE 


for a moment, arose again at her approach, a mur- 
mur compounded of whisperings, and giggles, and 
of badly suppressed and nasal snickers. Then the 
voice of Sandy detached itself. 

“In the dining-room, Lena? All right. Come on, 
you fellows; it ’s all right, really . Miss Julia knows.” 

What it was that Miss Julia did, or did not, know, 
Miss Julia herself had only the scantest time to 
question. There was the slightest possible delay 
in the hall, a delay of more whispers and giggles and 
more nasal snickerings. Then there came a tramp 
of booted heels down the hall, through the library 
and in at the wide, arching door which led into the 
dining-room: Sandy and a good score of his fellow 
comrades, their “party” baskets in their hands, 
the joyous anticipation written on their faces mingled 
with something akin to unholy mirth, and their 
bodies clothed — 

Miss Julia gasped, as the boys lined up before 
her. 

Down to their waists, they were accoutred as was 
seemly. Their jackets and their collars and their 
ties were irreproachable. But below the belt! Miss 
Julia gasped again, as her eyes swept down the line. 
Each boy before her was clothed, as to his lower 
members, in the paternal raiment, which had been 
imperfectly adjusted to fit the new dimension. And 
Sandy headed all the line, Sandy fat and chubby, 
Sandy whose father was six feet two, Sandy arrayed 
in the Sabbath trousers of that father, borrowed 
without permission and hitched up into irregular 
festoons by means of a long series of safety pins. 

There was an instant of utter silence. Then Sandy, 
catching Miss Julia’s eye, waved his basket, glanced 


SANDY’S SURPRISE PARTY 


143 


down at his attire and then winked cheerily. And 
then Miss Julia understood. This was the party 
Sandy had designed. This costuming was his remon- 
strance against Buddie’s grown-up aspirations. Miss 
Julia understood, and she laughed suddenly. So 
Sandy had given them all a good surprise? Then it 
should be her own turn next. With a queenly dig- 
nity, Miss Julia rose from the table and gave a cordial 
greeting to each boy in line. Then she turned back 
to the table where Ethel, seated at the farther end 
and almost invisible behind the great bowl of flowers, 
had been looking on at the scene with astonished, 
haughty, disapproving eyes. 

“And now, boys, I want you to meet my young 
cousin, Ethel Davenport,” she said, and only Sandy, 
standing close beside her, could make out the fun 
in her eyes, as she gave the introduction. “Come 
here, Ethel. I want you to know the boys and to 
help me entertain them.” 

But as Ethel, dainty and elegant, came stepping 
around the table, in obedience to Miss Julia’s re- 
quest, Sandy cast aside his basket and bolted from 
the room. 

“Oh, fellows, hide me somewhere!” he wailed, 
as he shot towards the door. “It’s that girl, the 
Philadelphia one ! Teresa told me that she was n’t 
coming till next week. Do put me somewhere out 
of sight, and tell Eric to bring me some sort of decent 
clothes, and then go, somebody, and wring Teresa’s 
neck.” 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


pet-lamb’s bath 

B UT I liked best the funny little fat one you 
called Sandy,” Ethel remarked, next day. 
Buddie chuckled in pleased anticipation of Sandy’s 
relish of the adjectives, when they were repeated 
into his irate ears. Sandy had aspirations towards 
being tall and thin and commanding. 

“Sandy is a good boy,” he responded then, with 
a curious note of condescension. 

“He wouldn’t look so very ugly, either, if he 
were only properly dressed,” Ethel remarked again. 
“How did they ever happen to put on those foolish 
things?” 

Her tone nettled Buddie. Teresa, in Ethel’s place, 
would have seen the two-edged joke which had come 
back upon the other boys with far more force than 
it possibly could have come home to him. Teresa 
would have laughed and carried on the fun. Ethel 
had ignored it utterly, treating the strange array of 
Miss Julia’s unexpected guests as she would have 
treated a black eye, or a damaged nose, something to 
be courteously disregarded, as too unspeakable for 
polite society. 

On the other hand, if Teresa had failed to grasp 
the inherent humour of the situation, Buddie would 
have explained it to her, clearly and at great length. 
But, instead — 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 


145 


“I think it’s time I went to give Ebenezer his 
breakfast,” he said, and straightway he departed. 

Ebenezer, however, was only the flimsiest sort of 
an excuse. Buddie was well aware that the cook 
had formed the habit of feeding Ebenezer; of stuf- 
fing him, rather, since Ebenezer’s hearty appetite 
made him the best sort of clearing house for all do- 
mestic waste and culinary failures. Ebenezer was 
not dainty. He took things as they came, and found 
no fault with gristley steak, or singed cookies, or rye 
muffins that were sticky in the middle. He ate them 
all, wagged his rearmost tuft of hair in token of his 
gratitude, and smilingly waited for more, until even 
Buddie cried oat at his waxing fatness and begged 
the cook to limit him to four good meals a day. 
Nevertheless, on this particular morning, he found 
it needful to oversee the preparation of Ebenezer’s 
breakfast. 

He was too late, however. He found Ebenezer, 
gorged and languid from much oatmeal and gravy 
and fried potato and cornbread, and a good drink 
of milk withal, lying in the sun outside the kitchen 
door. Between his outstretched fore paws, Pet- 
Lamb was curled up into a contented ball, now and 
then stretching out a curved fore paw, now and then 
rolling over just a very little, to manifest her pleas- 
ure in the friendly attention which Ebenezer was 
lavishing upon her. As the attention took the form 
of a thorough-going licking, not chastisement, but 
literal tongue-polishing, it is doubtful whether Miss 
Julia, looking on, would have shared Pet-Lamb’s 
perfect pleasure. The dog and cat lay on the soft, 
bare brown earth; and, in the course of Pet-Lamb’s 
rolling to and fro, a good share of the soft brown 


146 


BUDDIE 


earth had transferred itself to her soft white coat, 
now damp and sticky from the repeated polishing 
of Ebenezer’s friendly tongue. As result, Pet-Lamb 
resembled nothing else one half so much as she did 
a portly mud pie, an animated pie, and long, and 
tipped with curious appendages at either end; in 
short, a sort of animated fritter. 

Buddie’s heart smote him at the sight. Used as 
Miss Julia had become to Ebenezer’s growing love 
for Pet-Lamb, and to that love’s disastrous conse- 
quences, an outburst of affection such as this could 
only end in bathing and combing and hunting out 
fresh ribbons. Under some conditions, Buddie 
would not have minded; but he did mind now. He 
felt that Miss Julia had enough upon her hands in 
connection with Ethel’s entertainment, without the 
added care of Pet-Lamb’s ablutions. 

“Ebenezer, come here!” he ordered. 

Startled at the peremptory tone, Ebenezer scram- 
bled to his feet, blinking a little, as if in remonstrance 
at the sudden summons to postpone his rest. Then 
obediently Ebenezer came; but he brought Pet- 
Lamb with him, dangling negligently from his mouth 
and, to all seeming, perfectly content with this un- 
ceremonious means of transportation. 

As had happened more than once, that summer, 
in seasons of mental stress and strain, Buddie betook 
himself to the playhouse in search of Teresa. That 
was the queer thing about their friendship. When 
the world went well, they squabbled. When afflic- 
tion came to either one of them, he sought the other, 
and was the better for the unfailing sympathy he 
found. This morning, though, from all appearances, 
Buddie was not the only one to feel himself in need 



Buddie entered by way of the window sill . — Page 1^7 









































. 
























147 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 

of sympathy. The playhouse windows stood open 
to the summer air, and from out them proceeded 
sounds of discipline. 

“You naughty — ” whack! “naughty — ” whack ! 
whack !! “girl! You — ” whack ! “bad, bad — ” 
whack! “Rosa!” 

On the points of his toes, Buddie crept forward to 
the window. Teresa, her face flushed and her eyes 
swollen past all beauty, to say the very least, was 
smiting the luckless Rosa who lay prone across her 
knee. The total abandonment in the old doll’s 
position appealed to Buddie’s chivalry. 

“I say, don’t!” he protested suddenly, as Teresa, 
with an unlovely sound, half sniff, half gurgle, raised 
her arm again. “What are you lamming it out on 
Rosa like that for?” 

“Everything in this whole world,” Teresa an- 
swered comprehensively, too much absorbed in her 
own woes to be astonished even at Buddie’s summary 
approach and opposition. 

Buddie entered by way of the window sill. 

“Everything is nothing,” he said, as he dropped 
down beside her and laid protecting hands upon 
the aged doll who, it must be confessed, had stood 
the chastisement extremely well. “Give it a name.” 

“You’ll tell,” Teresa asserted fiercely. 

Buddie straightened Rosa’s crumpled skirt. 
Then, — 

“Did I ever?” he inquired. 

“N-no. But you might — ” 

“So you might break Rosa’s neck in one of your 
tantrums,” he retorted just a little mercilessly. 
“That doesn’t prove you’ll do it now, though.” 

“How mean you are, Buddie!” But, from the 


148 


BUDDIE 


way Teresa sat up and smoothed her hair, it was 
plain that the storm was passing. 

“No; I don’t think I am,” he answered slowly. 
“It’s only that it seems to me a little beastly to 
take it out on a thing that’s not to blame, as if I 
whacked Ebenezer,* when Sandy gets to feeling too 
funny for his manners.” 

Teresa waived the criticism and caught at the 
comparison. 

“That’s what’s the matter now,” she said. 

“Sandy?” 

“Yes.” 

“It generally is,” Buddie commented, with sudden 
moroseness, as there flashed across his mind the 
memory of his talk with Ethel. Ethel had admired 
Sandy. Moreover, she had contrived to phrase her 
admiration in a way that had suggested comparisons 
with Buddie, comparisons not altogether in Buddie’s 
favour. Not that she had called him Buddie, 
though. Rather, she had taken pains to address 
him as Ernest, with a long dwelling on the former 
syllable. 

At the sudden change in Buddie’s accent, Teresa 
looked up suddenly. That way, she knew, lay 
sympathy. 

“Has he to you?” she asked, a little bit unclearly. 

However, Buddie understood. 

“N-no. That is, not directly.” 

“It’s roundabout things that hurt the most, 
sometimes,” Teresa observed impressively. 

Buddie judged it best to change the subject. 
Teresa, as he had discovered long before, had a 
tendency to become philosophical, every now and 
then, and it always left him gasping. 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 


149 


“What has he done to you?” he queried, seeking 
to turn the talk into more concrete lines. 

He succeeded. 

“He insulted me!” Teresa burst out hotly. “He 
never did appreciate me, anyway. I wonder what 
he’d do, if anything were to take away his sister.” 

“Steady!” Buddie advised, stroking down Rosa 
gently, meanwhile, as if she had been Teresa’s 
ruffled feelings. 

“Well, I can’t be steady,” Teresa exploded. “No 
girl could. It’s criticise, criticise, criticise, from 
morning till night. Nothing I do ever suits him! 
And now it’s all that Ethel. It’s Ethel this, and 
Ethel that, till I’m sick and tired of her very name.” 

“It’s rather sudden; isn’t it?” Buddie said 
thoughtfully. 

“Ever since he came home from your house, last 
night.” Teresa spoke as if the experience had been 
ages on ages long, although, in fact, it was then 
only an hour past breakfast time. 

Buddie chuckled. 

“Wonder what he’d have said, if he’d heard her 
calling him ‘that funny little fat one’ just now,” 
he remarked. 

Teresa was only human. Therefore she bright- 
ened at his words. 

“Did she, really? And he thinks she’s beauti- 
ful. He did nothing, all through breakfast, but tell 
me how she sat up straight, and ate little teenty 
mouthfuls, and wore her hair braided around her 
head with a pink ribbon tied around it in a bow on 
top. Buddie, it’s enough to make you crazy,” she 
broke off abruptly. 

Again he smoothed out Rosa’s wrinkled skirt. 


150 BUDDIE 

This time, there was intentional meaning in his 
gesture. 

“Apparently,” he said then. And then he 
added, “Don’t you care, Teresa. Let them go. 
If they get on together, it will save us all the 
trouble of looking out for them, so we ought to 
be satisfied.” 

“It’s hard to have your own brother prefer 
another girl to you,” Teresa lamented, with a vain 
attempt to strike again her earlier and more genuine 
note of tragedy. 

Buddie shrugged his shoulders. 

“And it’s just as hard to have the girl visiting 
in your own house go gallivanting off with another 
fellow,” he retorted. “ However, I suppose, if we 
try, we can live it down in time. By the way, 
Teresa, speaking of living it down, does this kitchen 
happen to support a washboard?” 

Other strategists than Buddie have discovered 
that, in a crisis of nerves and wounded feelings, 
the bare suggestion of physical toil is often tonic. 
Teresa forgot her sorrows in her surprise. 

“A washboard?” 

“Yes.” 

“What for?” 

For his answer, Buddie whistled shrilly. An 
instant afterward, Ebenezer came trudging in through 
the open door; and in Ebenezer’s mouth was the 
sodden thing which had originally been the fluffy, 
white Pet-Lamb, now hastily gathered up from the 
grass outside the door of the playhouse where the 
two of them had been napping in the sun. 

“Drop it!” said Buddie, and Ebenezer let go the 
cat, who rolled over on her back and shut two grimy 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 151 

paws into his whiskers, as if in dumb entreaty not 
thus to be abandoned. 

Buddie spoke again, this time to Teresa. 

“That’s what for,” he said. 

Her earlier agonies of the spirit quite forgotten, 
Teresa was on her feet and alert in a second. The 
playhouse kitchen did support a washboard, as it 
seemed; also, which was a good deal more to the 
purpose, it supported a tub and a towel and a cake 
of soap. 

“We’ll want to heat some water, I suppose,” 
Buddie suggested, as Teresa went about her prepa- 
ration. “Then into the bath she goes, kerplunk!” 

And into the bath she did go, struggling a great 
deal and scratching not a little. However, Buddie 
was inexorable in his demands for cleanliness, and 
Teresa’s arm, trained in the bedtime ablutions of 
Horace and little Tootles, was both lusty and cun- 
ning. Accordingly, Pet-Lamb was scoured and 
soaped and scrubbed and rinsed, until once again 
her fur was white and shining. Then Teresa took 
up a small blue box. 

“What about this?” she inquired. 

“What’s this?” 

“Bluing.” 

“The cat is n’t a shirt,” Buddie told her crisply. 

“No; but my grandmother has her hair blued, 
once a month,” Teresa assured him, and her tone 
was lofty. 

“Let her go, then,” Buddie advised. “Hi! What 
in thunder are you doing? This is a laundry, not 
a dyehouse.” 

For Pet-Lamb, on Teresa’s other arm, had taken 
the wrong instant to try to get away. As result. 


152 


BUDDIE 


she and the box of bluing had landed simultane- 
ously in the tub of water. 

“Oh, for the love of — ” 

“No matter; we’ll rinse her off,” Teresa inter- 
rupted hurriedly. “Oh, catch her, Buddie! Catch 
her! Catch HER!” 

But it was too late. An ultramarine Pet-Lamb, 
dripping from every point of fur, had overturned 
the tub, had made a dash for the nearest window, 
and had vanished in the lilac thicket beside the 
boundary fence. 

It was not altogether chance, nor yet was it the 
resultant action of a guilty conscience which caused 
Buddie to be extremely late about coming in to 
luncheon, that same noon. The toilet of Pet-Lamb 
had been long in the making. By the same token, 
the toilet of the room had been still longer. Even 
a small tub of water and a small box of blue can 
work wonders in the shortest time; and both Buddie 
and Teresa had been too much absorbed in Pet- 
Lamb’s flight and the subsequent probabilities of her 
career to take prompt measures to stanch the tide. 
As result, it had taken many tubs of water and much 
labour of the elbow muscles to restore the kitchen 
carpet to a semblance of its normal colour, and to 
wipe away the azure drops already drying into the 
paint and furniture. Teresa would have attacked the 
task alone; but Buddie had been insistent, with 
the discouraging result that, at the end of all things, 
Teresa had been forced, in sheer humanity, to heat 
a fresh supply of water and wash off Buddie, before 
she dared let him out of the locked door of the 
playhouse. 

“You’d better change your things, before you go 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 


153 


to the table,” she advised him maternally, while 
they both stood on the top step, gasping at the 
sudden change of air, for, without discussion, they 
both had deemed it wise to close the windows and 
draw down the shades, before they set to work, 
and an eight-foot room grows steamy rapidly. 

“All right.” Buddie nodded. “I suppose I am 
a good deal of a spectacle.” And he scudded off 
towards home. 

The changing took him a . good deal longer than 
he had anticipated, by reason of the wetness of 
those things he sought to change. He accomplished 
it- at last, however, by dint of many tugs and 
thrashings; and, breathless and with the shiny 
complexion of one who has lately been parboiled, 
he hurried down to the dining-room. Ethel, dainty 
and quite unruffled, nodded nonchalantly at him 
from above her plate of peaches and whipped 
cream. 

“Sorry to be so late, Aunt Julia,” Buddie mumbled, 
as he tossed back at Ethel a casual sort of nod. 

Miss Julia smiled, and her smile matched the 
wee, wee rebuke in her reply. 

“I knew it must be something especial, Buddie. 
Else, you would have been on time, if only out of 
politeness to Ethel.” 

“So it was. Very special. Really, I couldn’t 
help it,” Buddie muttered. Then he fell to at his 
repast, leaving the burden of conversation on the 
others. 

Miss Julia sought to shift the burden. 

“Ethel has been out exploring things with Sandy,” 
she observed. 

Buddie attacked his lamb chop as if it had been 


154 BUDDIE 

an hereditary foe; but his attack was made in utter 
silence. 

Miss Julia spoke again. 

“You really took quite a long walk; did n’t you, 
Ethel?” 

“Yes, Cousin Julia,” Ethel answered. 

Miss Julia continued her amiable monologue. 

“Buddie is the greatest sort of walker. How far 
did you go, last Thursday, Buddie?” 

Buddie strangled over his peas. Then, — 

“Ten miles,” he made laconic answer. 

“Ten miles. That’s too much for us; isn’t it, 
Ethel?” 

Ethel smiled into her plate. If this rude boy 
wanted not to talk, he might gobble as silently as 
ever he might choose. She would give him a few 
lessons in the art of keeping still politely. 

“Yes, Cousin Julia,” she said again. 

To his own hidden consternation, Buddie caught 
himself mockingly echoing her reply into his plate. 
Really, this was worse than spanking Rosa for the 
sins of Sandy. Fortunately, however, Miss Julia’s 
attention was upon her guest, worrying a little over 
that guest’s unaccustomed taciturnity. 

“You and Sandy went all the way to the shore, 
then?” she inquired. 

Again there came that demurest of all replies. 

“Yes, Cousin Julia.” 

This time, Buddie repressed a furious wish to 
cast his spoon at Ethel. No mortal, living girl, he 
told himself, had the slightest right to let herself 
appear such an unmitigated Poll Parrot. 

Miss Julia persevered. 

“And you came home through the Hamilton 


PET-LAMB’S BATH 155 

grounds? You found it very pretty, I know. Did 
you see the playhouse?” 

Buddie raised his eyes furtively, caught Ethel 
staring straight at him, and dropped his eyes again. 

“Yes, Cousin Julia,” Ethel answered. 

Under the shadow of the table, Buddie sought to 
tie his legs into a hard knot, by way of alleviating 
somewhat of his mental agonies. If only that 
bobolinkum over there would speak out and say 
just what it was she saw! Then, despite the know- 
ing gleam he had surprised in Ethel’s glance, Bud- 
die’s puckered brow relaxed, as he recalled the 
anxious care he had given to drawing down the 
window shades. 

“That playhouse always makes me feel envious,” 
Miss Julia went on bravely. “I always longed for 
just such a place, when I was a young girl. Teresa 
has beautiful times there, and I know she’ll love to 
have you run in, as often as you like.” 

“Thank you, Cousin Julia,” Ethel s^id. And 
then, lifting her eyes to Buddie, she spoke out, as 
if in answer to his frantic wishings. “We saw you, 
as we were going by,” she told him quietly. “You 
don’t know how nice and contented you did look, 
sitting there together, playing dolls.” 

“I did not! No such a thing!” Buddie asserted 
swiftly and quite too loudly for perfect manners. 
However, it should be remembered in his defence 
that he was taken suddenly, when he was off his 
guard. 

Ethel raised her brows. 

“Oh; but we saw you,” she assured him lightly. 
“ Sandy was so amused. We stood there, quite a 
long-” 


A 


156 


BUDDIE 


What would have been the finish of her phrase, 
or what its vengeance, no one ever knew. Just at 
that very instant, Lena, serving the table, started 
until she nearly dropped her tray. 

“Landy, Miss Julia!” she exclaimed, in a species 
of suppressed shout. “Just do be looking at your 
cat!” 

And Miss Julia looked. 

Pet-Lamb, dry and warm and hungry after her 
long nap in the summer sun, had decided it was time 
for luncheon. Accordingly, after her wonted fash- 
ion, she had sought the dining-room, entered it, un- 
seen, and had caught Lena’s horrified eye just as 
she jumped to her accustomed chair. Miss Julia 
looked and looked again. It was Pet-Lamb ; it must 
be. No other cat was so round and sleek and 
puffy; no other cat would have known which was 
the chair where food and drink awaited her capri- 
cious appetite. But Pet-Lamb was white. This cat 
was blue, richly, beautifully blue, blue as the starry 
part of the flag, blue as the agitated heart of Ernest 
Angell who watched her appearing, as one watches 
one’s ancestral ghost stalking across an evil dream. 

“Ernest!” 

That was all; but Buddie departed from the table. 
As he went, even above the clatter of his upsetting 
chair, he could hear Ethel’s laugh, and her crisp 
comment, — 

“What a childish thing for him to do, Cousin 
Julia!” 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


DADDY S LETTERS 



S might have been expected, Buddie hated 


-Cjl Ethel with all his might and main throughout 
the entire afternoon, hated her long after Miss Julia 
had been to him in his room and listened to all 
the untoward chain of circumstance which had 
ended in the dyeing of Pet-Lamb, long after she had 
absolved him from all blame and made him feel that 
he was next of kin and the mainstay of the house. 
Upon the subject of Ethel, Miss Julia was consider- 
ately reticent. She began to realize that only time 
could bring those two potential rivals for her favour 
into any sort of intimacy. Only time could. The 
final question, however, resolved itself into whether 
time would. Miss Julia had her doubts. 

Whatever time’s intentions regarding the relation- 
ship to be between Ethel and Buddie, there was 
no denying that, as the days ran on, time was work- 
ing out a curious friendship between Sandy and Miss 
Julia’s dainty, finical young guest. Ponder on the 
matter as she would, Miss Julia could see no reason 
in it. She would far sooner have expected Ethel to be 
chums with the serious-minded Eric; but Ethel 
caused it to be understood most plainly that she 
would have none of Eric, that he bored her, that 
she disliked him only a little less than she disliked 
Teresa. How far she would have disliked Teresa, 


158 


BUDDIE 


had Buddie liked Teresa less, she did not deign to 
say. What she did say, was to the effect that Teresa 
made her nervous, jumping about and flapping back 
her pigtails from across her shoulders. Teresa had 
household tasks, too, and that offended Ethel, who 
wished to find her friends at leisure when she wanted 
them. And then there was the little Tootles, tearful 
and toothy, to be considered, little Tootles who 
every now and then became speckled with the heat. 
Ethel’s girl friends at home, none of them all, pos- 
sessed such an unlovely appendage as was little 
Tootles; but Teresa seemed ever to have him in 
her train. 

With Sandy, it was very different. If he had any 
household tasks at all, he always contrived to shirk 
them. If the tearful, toothy little Tootles, now 
presently to be baptised as Toby, felt a yearning 
for the society of Sandy, Sandy lost no time in dis- 
covering that he had an errand at the farthest limits 
of the town. And Ethel, as a rule, went with him. 

Buddie, meanwhile, detested little Tootles upon 
all accounts, but most especially because he often 
sought to lift up Ebenezer by his hair. None the 
less, Buddie concealed his detestation with what 
grace he could, and endured his presence for the 
sake of the society of Teresa who, in the intervals 
of her preparations for the coming fair, seemed to 
Buddie to spend half her time in ministering to the 
happiness of little Tootles. Moreover, Ethel pro- 
fessed to disdain the fair, condemning its object as 
absurd, its methods as old-fashioned. And so the 
passing of August marked an ever-increasing wide- 
ness between the two, Buddie and Ethel Davenport. 

Miss Julia, looking on, and mindful of Buddie’s 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


159 


promise to treat the guest as a gentleman and a scout 
should do, was forced to come to the conclusion that 
Buddie’s notion of a scout’s social duty must have 
been extremely rudimentary. Buddie, the garrulous, 
had become dumb at meals, glum in the evenings. 
In Ethel’s presence, the cloud rarely lifted from 
his brow, his eyes were rarely lifted above the level 
of Ebenezer’s backbone, or of his own plate at table. 
Alone with Miss Julia, he refused to be decoyed into 
talking over the reasons for his aloofness. He aban- 
doned either the subject, or the room, without the 
slightest loss of time. 

Ethel, meanwhile, sounded upon the subject, 
sniffed and said she did n’t care. She said it, though, 
with an accent that belied her words; and Miss 
Julia, with certain anguishing memories of her own 
girlhood uncomfortably fresh within her mind, 
forebore to press the matter further. 

And then, one day, there came a heavy rain, a 
hideous, pouring summer rain which kept one housed, 
whether he would or no. In the middle of the morn- 
ing, Buddie, with Ebenezer at his heels, strolled out 
to the verandah to take a look up at the western 
sky. To his surprise, he found Ethel there before 
him. 

“Hullo!” he said, as in duty bound. 

“Hullo!” she answered, for the boredom of the 
rainy day was causing some relaxation of her vocab- 
ulary. 

Buddie would fain have passed her by, without 
another word; but Ebenezer had different notions 
about courtesy. Accordingly, he marched up to 
Ethel and laid two sodden fore paws and a wet, wet 
muzzle into her pink linen lap. 


160 


BUDDIE 


“You dirty dog!” 

Buddie made a hasty snatch at Ebenezer. 

“Really, Ethel, I am sorry,” he said quickly. “I 
did n’t think he’d go to you, or I’d have held him.” 

Not unnaturally, Ethel resented his suggestion 
that she would not be attractive, even to a dog. 

“Perhaps he knows me better than his master 
does,” she retorted. 

If she expected to call forth an amiable protesta- 
tion, she was disappointed. Buddie merely changed 
the subject. 

“I wonder if it’s going to keep on, all day.” 

“I hope so.” Ethel spoke severely. “We need 
the rain.” 

“I don’t. I’ve had enough, thank you,” Buddie 
replied. “Come, Ebenezer!” And he turned away, 
as if to go back inside the house. 

Ethel flushed. Whatever her attitude to Buddie, 
it was annoying to her pride to be left to herself in 
this summary fashion. She struggled with her dig- 
nity for half a minute; then she sought to delay 
Buddie with a question. 

“Has the mail come?” 

“Yes.” 

“Any letters?” 

“Mine, from Daddy. That’s all.” 

Ethel fluttered the leaves of the book lying in her 
lap. 

“He is able to write you, then?” she asked, and, 
moreover, she asked it without a shred of malice. 

“Able?” Buddie stared. 

“Yes. I didn’t know. Mother said, last time 
she saw him, that he was looking perfectly dreadful,” 
Ethel said, with cheery tact. 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


161 


Buddie stared again. Then he attacked the 
question by its smaller end. 

“Does your mother know him?” he asked. 

“Of course. Everybody knows Doctor Angell,” 
Ethel said generously, for she felt that Buddie de- 
served at least so much consolation to make up for 
the uneasiness she saw growing in his eyes. 

Buddie ignored the tribute to his father’s fame. 
Instead, — 

“Where did she see him?” he demanded. 

“In New York.” 

“When?” 

“The day I came up here.” 

Buddie cast his fear far from him. 

“Then it could n’t have been my father,” he said, 
with calm finality, and then once more he whistled 
to Ebenezer, preparatory to reentering the house. 

Ethel’s next words stopped him like a pistol shot. 

“Oh, yes, it was. I was there, and I heard them 
talking together, heard what they said.” 

“And what was that?” Buddie inquired, in a 
voice he sought to make defiant, although in reality 
it was only rather faint. 

“ They talked about Miss Julia, and then mother 
asked him about you, and he told her you were here 
to spend the summer.” 

Buddie stiffened suddenly. Here was a mystery 
he could not understand. Daddy was in New York, 
unmistakably in New York; and yet Daddy had 
told him he was up among the big game in eastern 
Canada. However, Daddy did not lie. Here was 
the mystery, and, to Buddie’s mind, the mystery 
held trouble. Nevertheless, Ethel, sitting there so 
prim and perky and persistent, should get from him 


162 


BUDDIE 


no inkling that there was either trouble or mystery 
concerning Daddy. To prevent that, — 

“I’ve got to go,” he said abruptly. “Is n’t that 
Aunt Julia calling?” 

It was not Miss Julia calling, however, but a voice 
within Buddie himself, calling insistently for explan- 
ation, sympathy, for complete confidence. He had 
a sudden ugly fear that he had been deceived, trapped, 
treated as a little baby; not by Daddy, though, 
only by circumstance. If Daddy had been the spokes- 
man of the deceit, then Daddy, of a surety, had been 
the unwilling tool of that same circumstance. It 
was more to clear Daddy’s shoulders of all blame 
than it was to learn the truth that Buddie went in 
search of Miss Julia. 

He found her in her morning-room, upstairs. As 
a rule, Buddie never penetrated to that sanctum, 
for he realized instinctively that his aunt must have 
some time and space which should be sacred to her- 
self and to Pet-Lamb, free from the invasions of 
Ebenezer and himself. This time, however, Buddie 
violated his self-made rule. He marched upstairs 
to Miss Julia’s morning-room, and Ebenezer, seeing 
trouble in his master’s face, marched up beside him. 

“Aunt Julia?” Buddie said, from outside the 
door. 

“Yes, Buddie.” 

“I want to come in — awfully.” 

The door swung open. 

“Come, then.” But, as Miss Julia caught sight 
of his face, her accent changed. “Buddie child, 
what is it?” And, without thinking of the possible 
offence to Buddie’s boyish dignity, she held out both 
her arms. 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


163 


Neither did Buddie think about his dignity. In- 
stead, he flung himself into her arms and nuzzled 
his face into the frills of her morning frock. 

“Aunt Julia!” The words came with a great, 
ugly gulp of woe. “I must know what it is about 
Daddy.” 

Miss Julia held him close to her, so close, indeed, 
that by no chance could he see the sudden sweep of 
colour to her face, the sudden rush of tears into her 
eyes. 

“What about Daddy, dear?” she asked him 
quietly. 

“That’s what I don’t know. Something’s wrong, 
and I don’t know what, nor where he is, nor — ” 
Buddie’s head sought to bury itself and its woe under 
the shelter of Miss Julia’s protecting arm; “nor 
anything at all.” 

“What is it, Buddie?” she asked again. “Was 
there something in your letter that you could n’t 
understand about?” 

“No; it wasn’t the letter. It was Ethel. She 
told me that she and her mother saw him in New 
York, the day she came up here, and that her mother 
said that he was looking perfectly dreadful,” Buddie 
quoted. “And Daddy has been telling me that he 
was in Canada in camp with a man, and growing 
fat. Daddy would n’t lie about a thing like that, 
Aunt Julia. What does it all mean?” Buddie im- 
plored her. 

Miss Julia suppressed a momentary longing to 
deal with Ethel as her trouble-making propensities 
deserved. Then she gathered up her tact and cour- 
age, and sought, instead, to deal out consolation to 
the stricken Buddie. 


164 


BUDDIE 


“ Daddy hasn’t lied, Buddie,” she told him, in 
the first place. “ You can count on that, at any rate.” 

“Then what is it all so — mixed-up for?” Buddie 
asked, in a dazed fashion which seemed to Miss 
Julia to be far more forlorn than many tears. Once 
on a time, she too had known what it was to lose her 
moorings, and in a similar way to this. 

For a minute, she reflected swiftly. Should she 
speak out and tell the truth, or not? The mystery, 
such as it was, had been concocted in mercy to Bud- 
die’s peace of mind; but would it not be merciless 
to prolong the mystery, now that he had found out 
the fact of its existence? She reflected swiftly; 
swiftly she came to her decision. 

“Come and sit down, Buddie,” she bade him then. 
“No, not there. Come over here on this cushion 
right beside me, where we can cuddle while we talk.” 

Buddie did not stop to question what swift in- 
spiration led Miss Julia to the knowledge that there 
were hours and epochs when even a boy was not 
ashamed to cuddle. He merely obeyed, and dropped 
down on the cushion at her feet. Beside him, Eben- 
ezer seated himself, upright and anxious, staring 
with great gray eyes of pity at his master’s tear- 
stained face. Between dog and dog’s master, there 
was this one difference. The master would not doubt 
his daddy’s honour; the dog could not doubt his 
master’s truth. 

“Now, Buddie, listen,” Miss Julia said to him, 
once they were seated. “You can keep on trusting 
Daddy, for it’s all as he has told you. He was in 
New York, just one day. I knew he was there; but I 
did n’t suppose Ethel would happen to run across 
him, or I would have warned her.” 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


165 


Buddie raised his head. 

“Why?” he asked her, with a simple dignity that 
sat upon him well, despite his snubby nose and 
freckled cheeks. 

“Wait till we get to that part of it, Buddie, please,” 
Miss Julia bade him gently. “As I am telling you. 
Daddy was in New York for just one day. The rest 
of the time, he has been where he has told you, in 
the Adirondacks and then in Canada. He came 
down here to New York, though,” Miss Julia’s 
voice was very clear and low; “to see a doctor.” 

“A doctor? Daddy? But he’s a doctor, him- 
self,” Buddie said dazedly. 

“I know, Buddie,” Miss Julia assented. “But 
even a doctor does get ill, sometimes.” 

“Is Daddy ill?” Buddie asked her steadily. 

“Yes, Buddie.” 

“Is it — ” his voice caught; but he pushed it 
bravely, ‘ 4 dangerous ? ’ ’ 

“Not now, Buddie; at least, we hope not. Daddy 
thinks that perhaps the worst is over.” 

Miss Julia spoke as cheerily as she was able, so 
she was surprised to feel Buddie’s arm and then his 
head come down upon her knee, surprised at the 
note of utter anguish in the boyish voice. 

“Perhaps! Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” 

For a little while, Miss Julia did not speak; not 
with her tongue, that is. Her stroking hand, how- 
ever, told Buddie many things. 

“He thinks he knows it, dear,” she said at last. 

“What is it?” Buddie asked her shortly, for he 
did not trust his voice for any longer question. 

“It’s his lungs, Buddie. He was afraid — All 
the doctors were afraid that they were diseased. 


166 


BUDDIE 


There was a fighting chance, they told him, if he 
would give up his work, and his town home, and go 
into the woods to live out-doors, night and day. And 
so he went. It was hard for him, Buddie, hard to go, 
and harder still to leave you behind.” 

“Then why did n’t he take me with him?” Bud- 
die demanded. “I’d have loved to go, and I could 
have taken care of him, myself.” 

Miss Julia’s stroking hand drew a bit closer about 
Buddie’s shoulders. 

“That was the very thing to be avoided, Buddie, 
the very reason that, in the end, Daddy was so glad 
to go. He was afraid that, if you both stayed on 
together in the city, you would take the trouble 
from him.” 

“People don’t catch things like that,” Buddie 
assured her stoutly. 

“Yes, Buddie; people do. Listen just a little bit 
longer, and you will see why it is I know. Years ago, 
when you were a tiny baby boy, your mother had 
this same trouble, and she died. Daddy had you 
sent away from home, as soon as the disease began; 
but, all the time she was so very ill, he took the care 
of her. He did n’t stop to think about the danger 
to himself, or to you, afterwards, through him. He 
just remembered that he could take better care of 
her than anybody else could do, because he was a 
doctor and her husband. And the doctors say that 
is the reason he is in such danger now.” 

Buddie nodded slowly, his eyes heavy, but his 
face gradually lighting with a new belief. 

“Being Daddy,” he said at length and tersely; 
“he could n’t have done much else.” 

He spoke with an absolute unconsciousness of the 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


167 


light he was throwing upon his own boyish code of 
honour. It was an instant, though, before his aunt 
dared trust her voice. 

“No,” she assented then. “And neither, when he 
knew the present risk, could he ignore it, and let you 
share it with him. Instead, he sent you up here to 
stay with me, and he went into the woods to live 
until he should get well.” 

Buddie faced her steadily. 

“Aunt Julia, will he get well?” he asked. 

“We hope so, Buddie.” 

“But do you really believe it?” he persisted. 

Her eyes drooped before the insistence in his own. 

“Buddie, no one can really tell. We can only 
wait and see.” 

“How long?” 

“Perhaps a year.” 

“A whole year more without Daddy! And then 
perhaps — ” His head once more went down upon 
her knee, but only for a minute. “Why didn’t he 
tell me, when he went away?” he asked her. 

“He knew it would make you so much more un- 
happy, Buddie.” 

“Unhappy!” the boy echoed fiercely. “Did he 
suppose I’d want to go on being happy, when he 
was off by himself, missing me, and sick?” 

Miss Julia’s answer came without delay. 

“He did what he thought was best, Buddie. Per- 
haps he did n’t realize how brave you are.” 

Then her colour came, as she heard his short 
reply, although, — 

“But you realized,” was all he said. 

More than an hour later, they still sat there to- 
gether, talking. Their positions were to all intents 


168 


BUDDIE 


and purposes unchanged; but the attitude of Eben- 
ezer, prostrate and snoring on the rug, showed quite 
plainly that the worst of Buddie’s anguish was in 
the past. Indeed, his face and voice, though grave, 
were not uncheerful, as he asked his final questions 
and assented to Miss Julia’s answers. In Miss Julia’s 
lap there lay a little heap of letters, all the letters 
that she had received from Daddy since the trouble 
came. She had been reading them aloud to Buddie, 
reading them from end to end without omissions. 
Indeed, watching the boy above the pages in her 
hand, she felt assured that Daddy, watching him 
also, would have approved her course. Buddie was 
all a boy. Nevertheless, he was taking his trouble 
like a man. 

And Buddie listened intently to the letters, gather- 
ing in such comfort as he could out of details of 
lowering temperature and gaining weight, out of 
the predictions of the specialists and out of Daddy’s 
own plucky diagnosis of the case. He gained, too, 
more than a little consolation from his new ability 
to picture to himself just how, from hour to hour, 
Daddy was spending his days; from his knowledge, 
even, that the other man in camp was there to wait 
on Daddy, not to be a care to him. And so Buddie, 
plucky and young, listening to the letters and pick- 
ing up his slender consolations, yet felt his trouble 
stand off from him a little and give him time and 
strength to gather up his courage. 

“If only, though, I could do something to help 
him out!” he said at length. 

“You can, Buddie,” Miss Julia told him. 

“What?” Buddie’s voice was still a little listless. 

“Let him see you’re man enough to make the best 


DADDY’S LETTERS 


169 


of a bad matter. Make him feel you are happy here 
with me, even if you miss him, every hour. And I 
want you to keep on missing him, Buddie, just as 
much as you did at first. It would be dreadful, if 
you grew used to having him away from you; dread- 
ful if it ever came to where you did n’t care. But you 
can be happy, in spite of it, and have good times 
here in the country, and let him know you have 
them. Then he won’t worry about you, but be able 
to save all his strength for his own cure.” 

Buddie pondered. Then, — 

“I see what it is you mean, Aunt Julia,” he said 
slowly. “It’s been awful lonesome; but I ’ll try.” 

He rose, as he spoke, and, crossing to the window, 
stood staring out into the lead-coloured sky. Then 
suddenly he turned and marched back again, to take 
his stand beside her. 

“Aunt Julia,” he said turbulently; “there’s one 
sure thing about it: I’d die of it, if I were anywhere 
but here with you!” And, to Miss Julia’s supreme 
surprise, his two hands gripped her shoulders fast, 
as he bent down to give her an explosive, awkward, 
hearty boyish kiss. 

In the years to come, moreover, Miss Julia always 
felt that that kiss marked one of the two great epochs 
of her life. A little later on, there was to come the 
other. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


THE BOY SCOUTS RIFLES 



FTER the day and evening of the fair, Teresa 


went to bed, tired and footsore, but thoroughly 
convinced that life was worth the living. To be 
sure, Miss Julia’s lawn was tramped into a mosaic 
of crushed grass and heel-marks, and strewn with 
scraps of everything from tattered frills to singed 
rags of paper lanterns, while the garden, now de- 
cidedly informal, looked as if an army of locusts had 
swept over it. Nevertheless, everybody had been 
at the fair, and everybody had paid toll for the 
privilege. Teresa went to sleep, clutching the stout 
old outing-flannel duster into which she had knotted 
her goodly hoard of shekels, and trying her drowsy 
best to reckon up their equivalent in miniature rifles, 
and targets, and such other warlike supplies as she 
had set her girlish heart upon. 

Next day, talking the matter over with the en- 
thusiastic Buddie, she modestly admitted that the 
fair had been an unqualified success. Strange to 
say, the glamour had survived the night. Even the 
next-morning weariness was not enough to make 
Teresa doubt the value of the undertaking. Her 
hands shook with excitement, as she untied the knots 
in the duster and poured the contents of it at Bud- 
die’s feet, literally at his feet, as he sat beside her on 
the back verandah. 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 


171 


“It’s all yours, Buddie,” she said, and her voice 
thrilled in her excitement. “It was the only thing 
we girls could do to help along.” 

Curiously enough, Buddie delayed a moment, 
before he stooped to the little heap of silver and of 
crackling bills, a moment while his hand shut upon 
that of Teresa, outing-flannel duster and all. 

“It was a lot more that you cared about it, Teresa, 
and believed in it from the very start,” he told her. 

Teresa was not sentimental. Nevertheless, — 

“I didn’t. I only believed in you,” she made 
swift assertion. 

“Thanks.” Loftily as Buddie took the loyalty 
she offered him, his eyes showed that he was pleased. 
“Still, it comes to about the same thing in the long 
run.” 

“And it will help?” she urged. “Count it, Bud- 
die, do.” Again her voice shook with her earnest- 
ness. 

Buddie bent down to pick up the scattered funds. 
Then, thinking better of his intention, he slid down 
to the floor and, gathering the money within the 
rhomboid of his crossed legs, he fell to counting it 
aloud. Teresa watched him, breathless with ex- 
citement, her eyes dilating as the record mounted. 
At last, — 

“Gee- whittaker!” Buddie said, his eyes like sau- 
cers. “Sixty-seven dollars and seventy-nine cents! 
Three cheers for Teresa Hamilton! I’ll call a meet- 
ing of the boys, this very day.” 

Teresa cast down her eyes. 

“Then you are glad, Buddie?” 

“ Glad ! I ’m ready to jump out of my skin. Daddy 
has promised — I did n’t tell you, for fear it would 


172 


BUDDIE 


make you scare-y — to double anything you did.” 
Buddie chuckled suddenly. “I don’t suppose he 
had the least idea you’d bankrupt him like this; but 
his word goes, so there we are. We’ll have our rifles 
here by another week, and have a fund left over for 
the next thing. Teresa, you are a wonder, for sure.” 
And Buddie, his hoard clasped in his hands, sat 
staring up at her, with honest admiration written 
large upon his face. 

“The girls did most of the work,” she suggested 
generously. 

“The girls would n’t have done one single, blasted 
thing, if you had n’t started them about it,” Buddie 
contradicted. “They may have done some of the 
work; but you took up the idea and made all the 
plans.” 

Teresa shook her head. 

“No,” she protested loyally. “When you come 
to that, Buddie, it really was Miss Julia.” 

Buddie’s face changed, lighted. 

“When you come to that, Teresa,” he echoed her 
words; “it generally is Aunt Julia. Without her — ” 

“Don’t think about it, Buddie,” Teresa bade him. 
“We’ve got her, so there is no use in saying the rest 
of it.” 

But Buddie sat silent for a little, his eyes unsee- 
ingly upon the little hoard of notes and silver in his 
hands. It was a fact: Miss Julia was in everything 
and at the back of everything, nowadays, Miss Julia 
who had been to him a dreaded stranger, only such 
a very little while before. And it was as Teresa, in 
her wisdom, said: no use in thinking what it would 
be to get on without her, because they simply could 
not do it. And yet — Buddie glanced up at the 


173 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 

eager, girlish face above him. Without Teresa’s 
energetic help, the fair never would have been. Not 
all the Aunt Julias in the world could have gathered 
those girls into the playhouse, every summer after- 
noon, could have made them listen to the plans, 
could have kept them busy with needle and paste- 
tube and shears and raffia, fashioning the pretty 
trifles that they had sold at such ruinous rates, the 
day before. Even with Teresa, it was a mystery to 
Buddie how it had been accomplished. He had not 
been allowed to be present at those meetings in the 
playhouse; but some of the girls had brothers, and 
through them had leaked out the secret that Teresa 
often and often had been driven to carry things with 
the highest kind of a hand, or else see her plan fall to 
bits entirely. However, she had done it, and no 
lasting enmities had resulted from the doing. Bud- 
die gave her praise accordingly, praise hearty and 
unstinted. 

“And besides all that,” he added at length; 
“you’ve done another thing that, in the end, may 
count for a whole lot more. You’ve started a whole 
lot of people to talking about the scouts, and asking 
questions. The more they ask about it and find out, 
the more they’ll like it and like to help it on. How- 
ever,” he added, in swift generosity; “once we are 
marching through the world and doing things, 
Teresa, we’ll be sure to tell everybody we meet that 
you were the first one to set us on our feet.” 

And set them on their feet Teresa had, not alone 
by equipping them with rifles, but, what was more 
important, by snatching the popular attention and 
holding it, for the hour, fixed on the scouts and on 
those things for which they stood. Without this 


174 


BUDDIE 


little interest at its start, the whole thing might have 
sprung up and died a*way, as many and many a boy- 
ish fad is bound to do, without one grown-up in an 
hundred gaining an inkling of the honest, loyal ideal 
that stood back of it all: the ideal of defending the 
weak one and of helping on one’s neighbour, as well 
as of keeping one’s own life manly and clean and 
above all suspicion of bullying, or of dishonest deal- 
ing with the world. 

Even Miss Julia, overseeing the men who were 
busy cleaning up the lawn, admitted to herself that 
Teresa’s fair had been well worth the while. But 
Miss Julia, counting up the profits, added yet another 
one to which Teresa herself was blind. All that 
scorching month of August, more than a dozen girls 
had given up all sorts of good times, just for the sake 
of sitting in the stuffy little playhouse, toiling to 
raise money for an object in whose advantages they 
themselves could have no share. Moreover, they 
had done it gladly, had even sacrificed some of their 
cherished plans, glowing plans thought out with care, 
after they had come to a tardy realization that those 
plans might bring them into passing prominence, 
but could not fail to be a hindrance to the general 
good. Miss Julia, thinking of all this, understanding 
all that it had meant, not only in the ultimate build- 
ing-up of character, but in the more immediate mat- 
ters of disappointment and of grimly-grasped gener- 
osity, was suddenly overwhelmed with a new idea. 

‘‘ Wait, J ames ! Never mind rolling the lawn now,” 
she said, as she stepped down from the verandah. 
“ Peter, let the lanterns hang there, and fill up the 
gaps in the strings. No; not all. Just the double row 
around the main lawn and the strings that lead down 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 


175 


to the gates. You ’ll find plenty more lanterns in the 
box, down cellar.” Then she turned again to the 
astounded James, her face like a girl’s in her excite- 
ment. “Whistle, please, as hard as you can, James,” 
she bade him; “and then call them, Buddie and 
Teresa.” 

And James, once he had recovered from his amaze- 
ment, did whistle and call with right good will, 
while Miss Julia followed up the call upon her own 
account. 

“Teresa! Buddie - ee - ee!” she shrilled, and 
waved her arms in beckoning their invisible selves. 

Even upon the Hamiltons’ back verandah, they 
heard her call. Startled, they came running, Teresa 
in the lead, and Buddie and Ebenezer pounding 
after. Miss Julia laughed at their distracted faces. 

“It’s all right, children,” she called afar. “I have 
a new idea; that’s all.” 

Buddie, puffing heavily, dropped down upon the 
turf before her and wiped his brow with the clenched 
hand that held the bills. 

“Don’t do it often, Aunt Julia,” he besought her. 
“I’m winded.” 

But Teresa jumped to a swift conclusion. 

“It’s another fair, I know,” she said rapturously. 

Miss Julia shook her head. 

“Nothing one half so improving, Teresa. No; but 
I think that I shall have a party.” 

Two voices smote the air. 

“Miss Julia, how lovely!” 

“Ripping, Aunt Julia! Who?” 

“Just us.” She smiled at their enthusiasm. “ Bud- 
die, if you will get the scouts together, and Teresa 
will see about the girls, we’ll have them all come 


176 BUDDIE 

here, to-night, and have a little dance out on the 
lawn.” 

“Bully!” And Buddie rendered his aunt breath- 
less and speechless, by the way he cast himself upon 
her. 

Teresa, unable to get within reach, took it out in 
chiding Buddie. 

“Do be careful. You’re ruining her clothes and 
pulling down her hair, Buddie. Careful! Oh, call 
off that dog!” For Ebenezer saw no reason against 
his joining in the demonstration. 

Laughing and dishevelled, Miss Julia came out 
from their combined embraces and took up her 
theme, without a glance down at her demolished 
frock. 

“It’s all right, Teresa. Soap is cheap, and hot 
irons ought to be plenty in such weather as this,” 
she said. “But, to return to our party, I ’ve told the 
men to put back the lanterns on this lawn. If you 
children can hunt up the guests, and then pick up 
the worst of the rubbish in the house, I’ll get ready 
to go in town to see what I can find for us to eat. 
Teresa, under all the circumstances, do you suppose 
your father would come over here to help us out?” 

Under all the circumstances, Teresa did suppose he 
would, and Mr. Hamilton bore out the supposition. 
As he was an expert rag-time musician, his help took 
a most practical turn, when it came to the time for 
dancing. Moreover, Buddie, acting on his own 
initiative, had asked the retired West Pointer, the 
commandant of their prospective rifle corps, and, 
as it proved, the retired West Pointer owned a violin 
and loved to play for dancing. That settled the 
question of the orchestra; and Miss Julia’s check 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 


177 


book and her coaxing smiles settled the even more 
important question concerning the things that they 
should eat. Miss Julia’s party, like Teresa’s fair, 
seemed destined to be a rousing success. 

“The boys and the fiddle and the eats are all most 
gloriously looked out for,” Buddie observed, as, 
weary, but smiling, he came to show his best clothes 
off to Miss Julia in her morning-room. “There’s 
only one thing now that feezes me.” 

“How fine you look, Buddie!” she told him. 

“Ditto,” he answered, as his boyish glance swept 
over her. “I speak for the first dance with you, 
Aunt Julia.” 

She flushed like a girl, at his words. 

“Thank you, Buddie! I wish I could have it; 
but I must stand back, for the first one, and let you 
do your duty by somebody from outside the house.” 

His eyes twinkled. 

“Then go outside, yourself, and come in at the 
gate, if you’re so particular.” 

“No use, Buddie. We’ll dance together after- 
wards; but this is our party, and we must entertain 
our guests, not just enjoy each other,” she said, with 
smiling gravity. 

But Buddie shook his head, and proceeded to lay 
down the law. 

“A fellow ought to be allowed to dance with his 
best girl, whenever he can get the chance,” he grum- 
bled. 

Miss Julia shook her head back at him. 

“Buddie, what language!” she protested. And 
then she added, in belated question, “What’s the 
fly in your amber, Buddie?” 

“The?” 


178 


BUDDIE 


“The thing that worries you.” 

“Oh, that! It’s that Ethel,” he said, and his 
young voice hardened on its new note of boyish 
disdain. 

Miss Julia crossed the room to close the door. 
Then, — 

“What about Ethel, Buddie?” she asked, as she 
faced back again. 

“Nothing; only I do wish I could be sure she 
would n’t stand back and criticise every single thing 
we do,” Buddie said, a little bit resentfully. 

“You can,” Miss Julia told him quietly. 

“How, then?” 

“By keeping her so very busy, having a good 
time, that she won’t get any chance to criticise.” 

“Whew-w-w!” Buddie whistled. “That’s a 
pretty stiff proposition, Aunt Julia.” 

“Not a bit.” 

Buddie plumped himself down on the couch, 
plumped his elbows down on his knees, plumped his 
chin down on his fists and stared at his aunt un- 
winkingly. 

“How would you go about it, yourself?” he 
demanded. 

Miss Julia laughed, and the laugh, as it seemed to 
Buddie, took dozens of years from her apparent age. 

“I’m only an elderly relation, Buddie; not a boy 
that dances,” she suggested. 

“Much she’d dance with me!” Buddie retorted. 
“She told Sandy that she’d sooner waltz with a 
whale; Teresa heard her, and so did I.” 

Miss Julia’s next question showed that she had 
not yet forgotten what it was to be a girl among other 
girls. 


f 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 


179 


“Had you asked her, Buddie?” she inquired. 

“Not on your life. Bet you, I was glad I had n’t.” 

“S. L. A. N. G.,” Miss Julia spelled, and Buddie 
had the grace to blush. Then she went on, “Try it, 
to-night, and see.” 

“And get — er — rejected for my pains?” Buddie 
demanded, making the substitution just in time. 

“You won’t. Try it and see,” Miss Julia repeated. 
Then she dropped down at Buddie’s side upon the 
couch. “Buddie,” she said; “all in our best bibs 
and tuckers like this, and waiting for our party to 
come, it is n’t just the best time for ‘fidy stories,’ 
as I used to call them. And yet, I’m going to do it, 
for just one little minute. Do you know, Buddie, 
this is the very nicest summer I have ever spent? 
Perhaps, if you try hard, you can guess out the reason. 
The house used to be so prim and lonely; and now — 
it is n’t. But there has been just one horrid little 
cloud on this last month, Buddie.” 

Buddie was too honest to dodge his share in the 
accountability. 

“Ethel and me,” he admitted bravely. 

“Yes, dear; just that. You haven’t exactly 
quarrelled, nor been rude; but you have n’t pulled 
together and you have gone your ways. It was n’t 
the fault of either one of you alone. You both of you 
have been stiff and critical; but — ” 

“Well?” Buddie queried, his eyes upon the tips 
of her shining satin slippers. 

“But, Buddie, I rather think that you will have to 
be the one to set it right.” 

“I won’t,” Buddie assured her mutinously. And 
then he added, “Why?” 

“Because you happen to be the boy, not the girl. 


180 


BUDDIE 


Because she is a guest, and you belong here,” Miss 
Julia told him artfully. 

“I’ll be hanged if — ” Then Buddie shut his 
teeth. “What do you want me to do about it, Aunt 
Julia?” 

Miss Julia smiled, sure that her point was gained. 

“Dance with her, to-night, just as often as you 
can, Buddie; as often, that is, as you can without 
being neglectful of any of the others. See to it that 
she gets acquainted with the nicest boys, instead of 
standing about, all the time, with Sandy, the way 
she did, last night. Besides,” Miss Julia rose, as she 
spoke, and slowly took one bud out of the bunch of 
blossoms she was wearing at her belt; “besides, you 
know, Buddie, you are the one person in the world 
who can make Ethel and Teresa friends,” she added, 
as, bending down, she pinned the bud into his button- 
hole. “Now go along, my fellow host,” she ordered 
him. “You’re fine as a fiddle, and it is high time 
we both were downstairs, ready to shake hands with 
our guests.” 

Obediently enough, Buddie went his way, leaving 
Miss Julia to an instant of uneasy wondering whether 
or not she had chosen the wrong moment for her 
lecture. A word spoken out of season, she remem- 
bered from her own young days, could do an unend- 
ing amount of harm; and a boy like Buddie, she 
was well aware, had a lasting antipathy to too in- 
sistent and persistent admonition. Miss Julia’s 
face, looking back at her from her mirror, had an 
anxious pucker of the brow, an uneasy gleam in the 
pale brown eyes. Then the brow straightened sud- 
denly, and the brown eyes cleared. Buddie’s voice 
came ringing back to her from the hall outside. 


181 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 

“Hi! Ethel! Ethel Davenport !” he was bawling, 
at the very top of his lungs. “Stop your prinking, 
and come along downstairs. I ’ve got a new pinky- 
purple necktie for Ebenezer, and I ’m waiting to 
get you to put it on.” 

Miss Julia smiled. Then she held her breath in 
sudden fear. Good old Buddie! He was reliable 
as any clock; but girls were such unaccountable 
things. However, — 

“All right,” Ethel’s voice came down from her 
room; and Miss Julia, hearing, wondered no less at 
the accent than at the unceremonious phrasing; 
“I’ll be down in a jiffy, Buddie. Just wait till 
I — ” And a whacking in and out of bureau drawers 
drowned the remaining syllables. 

Three days later, Ethel took her departure. Bud- 
die, sincerely doleful on his own account, escorted 
her to the station and insisted upon carrying her 
smaller luggage. What was more, he also insisted 
on it that Teresa should escort her, too. Afterwards, 
walking home together, as a matter of course the 
two friends discussed the departed guest. 

“Really, after you get used to her flummeries and 
frills, she is n’t so very bad,” Teresa observed tem- 
perately, when the last trace of the smoke-banner had 
vanished from the distant horizon. 

Buddie lost no time in filing a remonstrance. 

“Not fair, Teresa! She’s a good deal more than 
that.” 

“How long since?” Teresa asked him mockingly: 

Buddie, however, was not to be deterred from 
speaking out his own opinion, even though it had 
been somewhat tardy in the making. 

“Ever since I took the trouble to find out,” he 


182 


BUDDIE 


retorted coolly. “No use, Teresa; we may as well 
give in and own up that we’ve been a pair of dunces.” 

“Speak for yourself, if you please,” Teresa bade 
him rather hotly. 

Buddie’s good temper remained quite unimpaired. 

“So I will, and for you, too. We neither of us 
had the sense to discover that, under her frosting, 
Ethel Davenport was the best sort of cake. Sandy 
was the only one of all of us who knew enough to find 
out for himself. I would n’t have known it, even 
now, if it had n’t been for Aunt Julia; and neither 
would you. Besides,” with a sudden turn, Buddie 
rushed the war across the borders and into Teresa’s 
camp; “if you didn’t like her, yourself, what did 
you give that dinner party for, yesterday, out in 
the playhouse?” 

“Out of manners to Miss Julia,” Teresa made 
demure reply. 

“Manners a lot! You did it because you liked 
Ethel; or else you were a worse hypocrite than I 
ever took you for,” Buddie told her flatly. “What ’s 
got into you, Teresa? It is n’t like you to dodge like 
this. Own up, and say you think she is worth the 
knowing.” ‘ 

Teresa struggled with a nasty little wave of rising 
jealousy, downed it, and faced Buddie with a laugh. 

“What if I do?” she asked him. “That’s not 
what’s worrying me, though. I’m only afraid you’ll 
end by liking her better — ” 

“Than I do you? Not much,” Buddie reassured 
her. “I tell you things, you know.” And then he 
added, as if by an afterthought, “Next year, though, 
I mean to see if we all can’t get a little bit more fun 
out of her being here. She is n’t you, Teresa, and 


THE BOY SCOUTS’ RIFLES 183 

she won’t be; but, after all, she makes another one, 
even if it is of a different kind.” 

But Teresa was deaf to his words. Instead, — 
“Next year?” she echoed, with sudden gravity. 
“How do you know you’ll be here, yourself, another 
year?” 

Buddie’s face fell, and his unfailing fund of slang 
and jollity forsook him. 

“I never thought of that,” he answered blankly. 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


buddie’s first novel 

C URIOUSLY enough, in answering Teresa as he 
did, Buddie had spoken the flat, literal truth. 
In making his boyish plans, that summer, it never 
once had occurred to him that the following summer 
might not find him there. 

No lack of loyalty to absent, invalided Daddy 
had entered into this, however. Buddie lay awake 
many a night, building bright plans of the things 
that the two of them would some day do together, 
for, since that stupefying minute when at first the 
fear of the Unknown had swept upon him, Buddie 
had clung fast to every hope that offered. His mind 
simply refused to grasp the idea that Daddy could 
be permanently taken out of his life; Daddy’s com- 
ing back again was merely a matter of time, and that 
not too long an one. Accordingly, Buddie made his 
plans, and then counted the hours till their fulfil- 
ment. However, in all these plans, Miss Julia had 
an active part. Unthinkable to Buddie that, this 
precious, priceless relative once discovered, he ever 
could get along again without her. Rather than that, 
by some intricate arrangement which Buddie never 
stopped to fathom, Daddy and he and Ebenezer 
would live out the remainder of their lives beneath 
Miss Julia’s roof. She and Daddy were half-brothers; 
at least, Daddy was her half-sister — 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 185 

And, at this point in his planning, Buddie, as a 
rule, went off to sleep. 

Ebenezer, likewise, appeared to have taken the 
firmest sort of foothold in Miss Julia’s home. More 
than that, he also appeared to have taken the bur- 
den of its protection upon his shaggy shoulders. The 
path to the front door he seemingly regarded as 
being safe from all invasion; but the path to the 
back steps, the path trodden by errand boys and 
by delivery people and by agents, this path Eben- 
ezer had assumed as his own especial charge. The 
people who trod that path he inspected carefully, 
sorting them out by some process known only to 
his canine brain. The delivery people, especially 
the ones who brought the meat, he welcomed with 
embracing paws. The errand boys he followed 
closely, his blunt nose pressed to their brief coat- 
tails, and his ears alert, his eyes eager to detect any 
sign of their stepping from the path of immediate 
duty. The agents, however, Ebenezer never fol- 
lowed. Rather, he led the way; but, as he led it, 
backing step by step and baying in deep-mouthed 
defiance, the process could scarcely be construed as 
a welcome, even by the most optimistic peddler of 
his class. 

All this was by day. By night, Ebenezer simpli- 
fied the process to its lowest terms. He allowed no 
one whatsoever to come inside the grounds, without 
making the welkin ring with his objections. Worst 
of all, Ebenezer was the lightest sort of a sleeper; 
and, as the weeks ran on, he took the whole street 
under his protection, and gave voice to his audible 
resentment against any of the neighbours who stayed 
out late, or had belated callers. Surely, Ebenezer 


186 BUDDIE 

was doing his lusty best to earn his salt at Miss 
Julia’s table. 

Miss Julia herself Ebenezer appeared to regard 
as an object for his veneration. Buddie was always 
first and foremost; but when, for one reason or 
another, Buddie was out of Ebenezer’s reach, then 
Ebenezer attached himself to Miss Julia’s side, and 
stolidly refused to budge, no matter what rival at- 
tractions offered. And Miss Julia’s heart was by 
no means proof against the loyal devotion of the 
great, gray dog, who muddied her frocks and tore 
her frills with his flapping embraces, who dragged 
and pawed and mouthed her best rugs into untidy 
wads close at her side, and then lay down upon them 
with his whiskers across her slippers and his gray 
eyes turned up to her in voiceless adoration, who 
insisted that their family group was incomplete 
without the presence of Pet-Lamb, and who hunted 
up Pet-Lamb and brought her, fresh from her bath, 
dragging limply along the floor or the garden walks, 
to lay her in Miss Julia’s lap, with a contented sigh. 
There were certain disadvantages concerning Eben- 
ezer; but, to Miss Julia’s mind, they were one and 
all outweighed by his devotion. 

Ebenezer’s devotion was more showy, perhaps, 
than that of Buddie; but, in all surety, it was no 
more deep and strong. Up to now, Buddie had never 
known much about women. He had supposed rather 
vaguely that they were merely an embodied “Don’t!” 
Instead, he had learned to know Miss Julia. Totally 
unaware, moreover, that Miss Julia herself had been 
changing fast, during those summer weeks in the 
society of himself and Ebenezer, Buddie merely 
wondered why it was that, as he phrased it, he never 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 


187 


had guessed what there was in her, until he had come 
to know her. It would have been utterly astounding 
to Buddie, if he had known that he, his irresponsible 
boy self, had been putting new things inside Miss 
Julia, through all that spring and summer: new 
understandings, new appreciations and, above all 
else, new desires. 

In one respect, Buddie was a true man. He 
swiftly had assumed it as his right and care and joy 
to look out for Miss Julia. He protected her as 
sternly as did Ebenezer, and with infinitely less fuss. 
He delighted in fagging for her, in doing her small 
errands. Most of all, he rejoiced in finding out her 
petty wishes and in anticipating them to the best 
of his ability. To be sure, he found it more ennobling 
to walk in town and back again to get her a box of 
chocolates than it was to black his shoes. He vastly 
preferred the construction of a rustic verandah foot- 
stool that tumbled over, every time one touched it, 
to the more prosaic occupation of brushing the dried- 
up mire out of Ebenezer’s frilly thighs. However, 
Buddie reasoned, the footstool would stay made and, 
upon no conditions, would Ebenezer’s thighs stay 
clean. He chose to put in his toil upon more perma- 
nent achievement. It was his pleasure to lay the 
fruits of his adoration at Miss Julia’s feet; but it 
was the privilege of his masculine logic to decide 
what form those fruits should take. 

It was towards the end of August that Buddie read 
his first grown-up novel. Lena had lent it to him, 
to solace the pangs of an all-day pouring rain. It 
was a very romantic novel, with a stern duke, and a 
poor musician who had long hair and aristocratic 
hands and a family pedigree sewn up in a wallet 


188 


BUDDIE 


which he hung about his neck, and the duke’s sister, 
who was dying of an incurable disease that no doctor 
could equip with a proper label. In the end, of course, 
it all came right; and the duke’s sister danced all 
the others into their chairs at her own marriage ball. 
Buddie devoured the novel greedily. He liked it 
from the start, because they all had such good things 
to eat, and because the poor musician shot five plover, 
which Buddie from the context took to be some sort 
of a mushroom, in the air, without pausing to reload, 
and all with a single-barreled gun. This, of course, 
was immediately after Teresa’s fair and before the 
consequent coming of the rifles; and, at that epoch, 
marksmanship seemed to Buddie to outrank mere 
probabilities. Later, as the novel progressed, he 
tried his level best to identify Teresa with the heroine, 
but that was beyond even Buddie’s powers. Teresa 
was too fat; moreover, no heroine could be imag- 
ined with a little Tootles in her train, or even 
sweeping up the playhouse kitchen floor, after 
one of her Saturday repasts. Clearly, Teresa would 
not do. 

However, there must be a human peg in the back- 
ground, a peg on which to hang the most romantic 
of the book’s adventures. Dismissing Teresa, Buddie 
cast about in his own mind, and chanced upon Miss 
Julia. She was the very one, except a little bit too 
old. People of thirty-one could never have romances. 
Still, he could put it back a little bit into the edge 
of the past. Perhaps Aunt Julia might have had a 
romance once. Of course she had. Did n’t Teresa 
say so, and tell him all about it, weeks before? It 
was a perfect romance, too, perfect and unfinished, 
perfect because it was unfinished. To be sure, though, 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 


189 


an insurance man was n’t like a musician; and Bud- 
die even had his doubts about the wallet. It would 
be nice, of course; only it would make one’s shirt 
so very humpy. But, otherwise, the romances were 
much alike. He read on greedily till time for lunch- 
eon; and, all the time he read, one corner of his mind 
was busy fitting Miss Julia and the insurance man 
into their proper niches in the pathetic tale. The 
pathos was at its highest tide, when Buddie was 
called in to lunch. 

Throughout the meal, Miss Julia missed his wonted 
chatter. Instead, Buddie absorbed his chicken 
salad and his fried potatoes dreamily, as if he did 
not taste them; and, from above his cup of steaming 
chocolate, he gazed across at Miss Julia with sad 
and contemplative eyes, as if in wonderment that 
she could find an appetite in such a crisis. At last, 
his silence and his melancholy stare came on Miss 
Julia’s nerves. Was the boy ill or homesick, this 
rainy day; or was there something in her own ap- 
pearance to bring about this melancholic scrutiny? 
Accordingly, — 

“What is it, Buddie?” she asked him, as the silent 
meal drew towards its ending. 

Buddie started as suddenly as if one of the charac- 
ters in the book had walked into the room to put 
the question. 

“Oh, nothing,” he evaded. “Why?” 

“I thought you looked — ” Miss Julia ransacked 
her mind for the proper word; “worried.” 

“No,” Buddie told her heavily. “I was only 
wondering.” 

“Wondering what, Buddie?” 

His answer took her breath away completely. 


190 


BUDDIE 


“Wondering whether lowly birth should be a 
barrier to love,” he announced. 

“What!” Miss Julia’s eyes and accent both im- 
plied her alarm lest Buddie’s brain suddenly had 
become affected. 

Buddie condescended to explain himself in terms 
culled from his every-day vocabulary. 

“I was wondering, if a fellow loved a mick; that 
is, if a girl loved him, whether she ought to marry 
him, even if he did n’t have a penny to his name.” 

It was one of Miss Julia’s charms for Buddie that 
she never stopped to question the sources of his in- 
terest in any subject, but flung herself into its dis- 
cussion without delay. She did it now. 

“It might depend a little upon how much she 
loved him, Buddie.” 

“I mean,” Buddie made further explanation; 
“ if she loved him till the heart within her turned to 
water in his presence.” 

This time, Miss Julia felt it was her duty to protest. 

“But, Buddie, people’s hearts don’t act like that,” 
she said. 

“Oh, yes; they do. I read it in a book,” Buddie 
assured her promptly. 

“A medical treatise?” Miss Julia queried irrepres- 
sibly. 

Buddie shook his head at her frivolity. 

“Of course not; I’m not Daddy,” he told her, a 
little impatiently. “It was in a novel; but people 
who write novels have to know all the things they 
write about, doctor things and all. I ’ve heard Daddy 
say so, lots of times, and he used to roar over the 
mistakes they made. And this one’s knees failed 
her beneath his questioning glance. Aunt Julia,” 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 


191 


contrary to all his teaching, Buddie plumped his 
elbows on the table, as he put the question; “did 
you ever feel your knees go like that?” 

Miss Julia flushed a little. Faint as it was, though, 
Buddie saw the flush and resolved to hark back to 
it again, a little later on, if he had the chance. 

“No, Buddie. They never did.” 

Buddie compressed his lips. Then he put another 
question, a leading one, it seemed to him. 

“Have you a woman’s heart, Aunt Julia?” he 
demanded. 

Miss Julia gave her whole attention to the sugar- 
ing of her blackberries. At last, — 

“I certainly hope so,” she said gravely. 

“She had,” Buddie made incomprehensible reply. 
“I thought perhaps that was the reason it acted up 
so, for mine does n’t; but you say yours — No; it 
was your knees. But, Aunt Julia, don’t you really 
think, if she felt that way in her knees and things, 
she ought to marry him?” 

Miss Julia still clung fast to her gravity. 

“It might depend a little bit on him, Buddie.” 

“Oh, he loved her, for a fact, and he used to sit 
up, all night, and think about her.” 

“Very foolish of him,” Miss Julia offered com- 
ment. “He’d much better have stood up, all day, 
and worked for her.” 

“So he did, and his eyes grew hollow; but it 
was n’t of any use at all, she was so hard of heart,” 
Buddie argued for his hero. “He could hit the bull’s 
eye, nine times out of ten, too.” 

Miss Julia allowed herself to relax and laugh a 
little. 

“And even that did n’t affect her watery heart, 


192 


BUDDIE 


Buddie?” she inquired, with what seemed to Buddie 
a most unsympathetic sort of cheeriness. 

“Not a stiver. You see, she was of the bluest kind 
of blood, and beautiful, and kept a pair of spanking 
bays. He was poor as poverty and lowly of birth. 
He had n’t a thing in the world but his talents and 
his ten fingers and the wallet that held his pedigree,” 
Buddie told her eagerly. 

In spite of the fact that people of lowly birth do 
not, as a rule, carry their pedigrees upon their per- 
sons, Miss Julia began to look more interested. 

“How did they ever happen to meet, Buddie?” 
she inquired, not too unnaturally. 

“She was out driving in the wood, and her horses 
ran away. At every plunge, they just did n’t tip 
the carriage over and tilt her out; but she managed 
to hold on, even after they had pitched the driver 
head over heels. And her face was ashy white; but 
no cry came from those brave lips. And then, all 
of a sudden, he came in sight. He was a wonderful 
shot, and he had just been out hunting, so he had 
his gun with him. As soon as he saw the maddened 
horses bearing down upon him,” Miss Julia was 
having all she could do now to sort out the story and 
translate it out of Buddie’s vernacular into book 
language and back again; “he up with his gun and, 
without more than a jiffy to take aim, he shot the 
harness off the horses, strap by strap, until the last 
one fell away.” Buddie swept on rapidly, too intent, 
now, upon his story to heed the fact that his hearer 
might know some measure of uncertainty as to which 
one fell away: the last horse, or the final strap. 
“And then,” he went on, still ambiguously; “loosened 
by the shots, they dashed away, unguided, and 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 193 

the rocking, plunging carriage came to a sudden 
halt.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes,” Buddie passed his plate for more berries. 
“Isn’t that a thriller, though?” 

“I should say it was. What is it?” 

“ The Low-Born Lover .” 

“What!” Miss Julia’s accent was indescribable. 

“Yes. It’s splendid,” Buddie told her. 

“I should judge so.” And Buddie’s quick ear 
caught a faint note of sarcasm. 

“Really, it is, Aunt Julia; and it’s very instructive 
too. It tells all about violins, and kitchen gardens, 
and the way to serve your table, when the king is 
coming in to dinner with you.” 

“Where did you get this — this book, Buddie?” 
Miss Julia asked, as temperately as she was able. 

“Lena let me take it.” 

“Lena?” Miss Julia silently registered her full 
intention to have it out with Lena, later on. 

“Yes. I hadn’t anything to do, this morning; 
and it was too wet to go out and have any fun, and 
so she lent me the book. It’s a good book, too. It’s 
set me thinking about lots of things.” 

“Evidently.” Try as she would, Miss Julia could 
not keep her voice from sounding rather dry. 

But Buddie was once more mounted on his former 
theme, and paid no attention to her dryness. 

“Aunt Julia, tell me truthfully,” he persisted; 
“after all that, don’t you really think it was her 
duty to marry him?” 

Miss Julia resigned herself to the inevitable dis- 
cussion, totally unaware, however, whither that dis- 
cussion was destined to lead. 


194 


BUDDIE 


“Not unless she loved him, Buddie.” 

“But she did love him, I keep telling you. She 
loved him with all her heart, loved him just as much 
as I love Ebenezer. And he loved her.” 

“Then what was the matter?” 

“That he wasn’t of her set. He was poor, and 
wore horrid clothes, and did n’t ask the king to din- 
ner, and, if he had, he would n’t have come. But I 
don’t see that all that ought to make the difference. 
A noble heart can beat in even the breast of a lowly- 
born insurance man,” Buddie argued glibly. 

Miss Julia whitened to the lips. Then she turned 
to a dark, dark red. She cast a strange sort of a 
glance on Buddie, half angry, half afraid, and wholly 
anxious, as if dreading the thing that, in all proba- 
bility, he would say next. 

However, Buddie rushed on with his argument, 
totally unaware of his unconscious slip of the tongue. 

“She loved him, and he loved her. He was a 
gentleman, away down inside all his shabbiness; 
he knew the right sort of things to do, and the right 
way to do them. And she had money enough for 
both of them, and she did love him awfully. That’s 
why I think she was a horrid snob not to marry 
him; don’t you?” 

“Didn’t she marry him?” Miss Julia asked a 
little faintly. 

“She has n’t yet. Of course, I don’t know what 
will come at the end. Now she has told him nay, 
and he has swallowed his sorrow,” Buddie spoke as 
if it had been a capsule; “and gone away to the outer 
world to work and wait and suffer. Really, you can’t 
help feeling sorry for him; but I think he acted a 
good deal like an ass to go away.” 


BUDDIE’S FIRST NOVEL 


195 


“Buddie!” Miss Julia’s accent of rebuke was, 
perhaps, the sharper because she had been taking a 
curiously personal interest in the fate of the hero, 
and so resented Buddie’s condemnation all the more. 

“Well, he did,” Buddie insisted rather mutinously. 

Miss Julia appeared to be following out a train 
of thought that was all her own. At last, she came 
back to the realization of Buddie’s presence at her 
side. 

“What ought he to have done, Buddie?” she 
questioned, and an older listener than Buddie would 
have wondered at the slight catch in her voice, as 
she put the question. 

Buddie’s reply came so promptly as to dismiss 
all doubts as to how he himself would have met the 
same emergency. 

“ He ought to have grabbed her in his arms and 
lugged her off to the nearest rector he could find,” 
he answered, and once again Miss Julia’s colour came. 
“ At least,” he amended hastily; “ that ’s what I 
think about it, Aunt Julia. Of course, though, you 
ought to be a better judge than I.” 

“Why, Buddie?” Miss Julia’s voice was scarcely 
audible. 

Like the gunshots of his hero, Buddie’s answer, 
albeit unconsciously, struck full on the bull’s-eye 
of the situation. 

“Because, Aunt Julia, you ought to know just 
how the woman feels about it.” And then, all of a 
sudden, he awakened to a belated realization of the 
fitness of his words. “Jiminy cricks, Aunt Julia!” 
he burst out penitently; “I didn’t think at all. 
Honest and true, I really never meant to twit on 
facts.” 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


THE REGATTA 

T HE fair over, Ethel gone and summer going fast, 
Buddie was making up his mind to go back to 
school once more, making it up with a reluctance 
born of the happiest summer he had ever spent. 
True, there was the lack of Daddy; but the past 
ten days had brought the grand news that Daddy 
was really and truly gaining. And, atoning in some 
measure for Daddy’s absence, there had been Miss 
Julia, and Teresa, and the captaincy of the scouts, 
besides the real country where there were things to 
do, the country where one lived and learned the 
possibilities of every by-path in the region, not went 
to on a journey for a more or less short vacation 
which always ended just as one grew used to it and 
cared to stay. This was all quite different. 

It had been a wonderful summer, Buddie admitted 
gloomily, now that it was almost gone. Anyway, 
he had made the very most of it; of so much he was 
sure. With that belief held fast in his mind, he faced 
the opening of school with so much better grace. At 
least, he would be spared the regret of knowing he 
had failed to make the most of his vacation. But 
now school loomed close at hand, school where one 
must sit in a row and learn things and keep very 
still. Worst of all, school stretched away indefinitely 
before him; it would be years and weeks till Christ- 


197 


THE REGATTA 

mas came and brought a cessation of the dull routine. 
However, there was no avoiding it. One must face 
the music like a man. Buddie shut his teeth, and 
swallowed his own repinings as well as he was able. 

And then, all at once and at the very last minute, 
a wonderful thing happened. No one really seemed 
to know just what sort of a thing it was; but it de- 
layed the opening of school for two whole weeks, 
while a small army of carpenters was set to work 
with feverish haste to put the thing, whatever it 
might be, to rights. Buddie could hardly believe his 
ears, when Sandy came rushing in, one morning, to 
tell him the good news. 

Sandy departed to tell the news to some more peo- 
ple and so to spread the general rejoicing. Buddie 
went to find Miss Julia. To his extreme surprise, she 
received the tidings with almost as much pleasure as 
he himself had done, and said never a word of the 
loss to his education and his manhood caused by 
the two extra weeks of his vacation. 

Instead, she merely laughed a little, after the ir- 
responsible fashion which had been growing on her 
of late. 

“How very nice!” she said. “Really, Buddie, I 
could n’t have planned it any better, myself. What 
if we make the most of our chance, and run off some- 
where for a little change? I was just planning for it, 
earlier, when Teresa started on her fair, and I did n’t 
quite like to go off and leave her to put it through 
alone. Then Ethel stayed a little longer than I had 
expected, and I could n’t see my way to get it in. 
Now I ’ll telegraph for rooms, and we’ll be off, to- 
morrow night.” 

And Buddie stood and listened to her swift out- 


198 


BUDDIE 


lining of her plan’s details. When she had finished, 
it seemed to him that one word only could be found 
to fit the situation. 

“ Bully!” he said, and Miss Julia, looking into his 
radiant face, forebore to criticise. 

“And one more thing, Buddie.” As she spoke, 
Miss Julia bent forward, her hands clasped on her 
knee, her eyes up6n his face. “What do you think 
of our taking Teresa with us? She would n’t be much 
in the way; would she? And I really think she needs 
a rest from little Tootles.” 

“In the way? Aunt Julia!” And then the power 
of speech left Buddie utterly. 

Miss Julia had no trouble in interpreting his si- 
lence. Moreover, to judge from the quality of her 
smile, she found it satisfactory. Accordingly, — 

“Then will you go and hunt her up, Buddie, and 
bring her over here? You need n’t tell her why I 
want her, though. I’ll be telephoning to people: 
the telegraph office and the tickets and the luggage 
and all that, while you are gone.” And she took the 
receiver from the stand, close at her elbow. 

Miss Julia had had long experience in planning 
journeys; but never before had her plans worked 
out to so speedy and successful a finish. This was 
at noon on Thursday. At dawn on Saturday morn- 
ing, three people, one of them as sleepy as the other 
two were lively, were landed from their Pullman on 
the platform of a tiny station in the northern hills. 
Beside them was a huge and frowsy dog who had 
objected to being left at home even more strenuously 
than he had objected to his night in the clanging, 
rocking baggage car, tied up among the trunks and 
with a pink pasteboard tag hung on his collar. It 


THE REGATTA 


199 


had been a long and anxious night to Ebenezer, al- 
though Buddie had visited him from time to time, 
and assured him that everything was quite all right. 
In spite of Buddie’s assurances, though, Ebenezer had 
his doubts, many doubts and serious. Strange men 
kept coming into his new kennel, and saying things, 
and sticking curious fingers into his back hair. Eben- 
ezer showed his teeth; but he forebore to growl, 
less, however, from manners than from canine intui- 
tion that mere growls would be inaudible in such 
clattery surroundings. 

Breakfast, that morning, seemed to them all un- 
ending: to Miss Julia because it delayed by just so 
much the sound, sound nap for which her very soul 
was longing; to Buddie and Teresa because they 
were in a hurry to go outside and explore things. 
Only Ebenezer ate with stolid unconcern. Neither 
curiosity nor exceeding sleepiness could put a brake 
on Ebenezer’s appetite, once it went into action. 
He merely took in food, until his frowsy legs could 
no longer bear the burden. Then, when at last they 
collapsed beneath it, he curled himself up, just where 
he lay, and calmly slept it off. 

A week afterward, Buddie and Teresa, fat as cubs 
and brown as berries, would have affirmed to the 
ears of all men that they had found a veritable para- 
dise. The place itself counted for much : half hotel, 
half camp as it was, pitched upon the very borders 
of a long, narrow lake that wound in and out between 
its mountain walls. The walls were steep and wooded 
and just now splashed here and there with the yel- 
low of birch, the scarlet of the maple, for autumn 
came on early in those northern woods. 

So late in the season as it was, the summer colony 


200 


BUDDIE 


had dwindled to its lowest terms; but, as is often 
the rule, it was the nicest people who stayed on till 
the very end. To all appearing, Miss Julia knew 
them all. Everybody stopped beside her table, that 
first morning. In fact, Buddie and Teresa found 
their greetings a sad interruption to the process of 
satisfying their own lusty appetites. 

Besides the grown-up people, a round dozen of 
youngsters filed into the dining-room. Buddie’s eye, 
trained to the distinctions of the city, discovered that 
they were from the private schools which open late. 
Reasoning swiftly and shrewdly, he passed on to the 
belief that they would be good all-round athletes, 
and so, in a place like that, the better worth the 
knowing. The event justified his belief. By noon, 
he was outclassed on the tennis court; by dinner 
time, he and Teresa, totally unaccustomed to fresh- 
water rowing, had been left behind at the finish of 
an impromptu regatta. 

That night, when Buddie and Teresa had gone 
to the small log cabin where they were to have their 
rooms, with Miss Julia to chaperon and Ebenezer 
to protect them all, the other youngsters, gathered 
in the dining-room, talked the new arrivals over. 
Their verdict was unanimous and favourable. The 
new-comers not only did things well enough to be 
worth while; but they took defeat pluckily and 
without seeking to make excuse. Teresa handled her 
oars like a boy, and yet she did her hair and managed 
her skirts like the nice girl she so plainly was. As 
for Buddie, there was one phrase upon the tongues of 
all. He was all right. The lagging interest in the 
season’s sports showed signs of quickening. Two 
days later on, it was once more at fever heat. 


THE REGATTA 


201 


By degrees, however, as the days went on, the 
interest centred itself almost entirely on the rowing. 
The place accounted a good deal for this, for it was 
ideal for the sport. The lake was a long, winding 
stretch of water, free from rocks and shoals save at 
one spot, half-way up its length, where a narrow line 
of ragged boulders stretched out from either shore 
until they almost met across the narrow channel. 
Moreover, shut in as it was by mountains, upon 
nine days out of every ten, the lake was as smooth 
and quiet as the Frog Pond on Boston Common. 
The level ground along the shore was entirely too 
narrow to admit of many land sports. In fact, the 
little plateau that held the cabins and the tennis 
courts was almost the only break in the whole great 
circling slope which stretched from the summits of 
the mountains down to the narrow rocky belt that 
girdled the water’s edge. On this account, the sum- 
mer colony was practically driven to the lake for all 
their out-door amusements, and rowing flourished, 
to the neglect of other sports. 

The social stir which followed upon the discovery 
that both Buddie and Teresa could row more than 
a little, sent the fleet of boats out upon the lake once 
more. Every day, and then all day long, the young- 
sters were out upon the water, now racing to and fro, 
now drifting idly in the sunshine, now in pairs, or 
each one by himself, now huddling together in a clus- 
ter of green boats and pale-brown and flashing oars. 
It was all great fun, purposeless, irresponsible, idle fun. 

And then, all at once, somebody, some of the men 
who sat about on the verandah and waited for a 
chance to talk to Miss Julia, offered a cup for one 
final regatta of the season. An hour after the offer 


BUDDIE 


202 

was announced, the entire camp was buzzing with 
the plans. To be sure, the contestants must be under 
sixteen years old; but that fact did not affect the 
general excitement in the very least. Everybody 
who was not under sixteen, was a mother, or a sister, 
or a grown-up cousin of somebody else who was; and 
the grown-ups took the situation a good deal more 
seriously than did the contestants themselves. 

The remaining rules were simple. Any number 
of boats could enter for the contest. Each boat must 
be rowed by two people, a boy and a girl. Each one 
must pull two oars. They could pair off in any way 
they chose. The course, though, was a long one; it 
stretched almost the whole distance from one end 
of the lake to the other, and the finish should be just 
opposite the broad verandah of the great log cabin 
where they all had to gather for their meals. 

Then it was that, for the first time in her life, 
Teresa learned the practical meaning of the phrase: 
a social triumph. All the next day after the offering 
the cup, her steps were dogged by anxious-faced 
boys, each one striving to be the first and only one 
to speak to her alone. To every boy of them all, 
Teresa returned the selfsame answer, — 

“Sorry; but I’m going to row with Buddie.” 

Not that Buddie had asked her to row with him, 
however. A friendship such as theirs can take a good 
many things for granted. 

A day of belated sultriness heralded the race. 
Almost everybody was late to breakfast, that morn- 
ing, by reason of having had to dig down to the bot- 
tom of the trunks for the summer thin things which 
they had folded away to be put on no more. Every- 
body, when he did come into the dining-room, halted 


£03 


THE REGATTA 

beside some one of the fourteen contestants to express 
commiseration. However, they one and all of them 
agreed, it could not fail to freshen up a little by the 
afternoon. 

It did fail to freshen up a little, though, did fail 
entirely. Indeed, to all appearing, the wheel of 
time had slipped a cog, and, without warning, Sep- 
tember had given place to July. One by one, after 
luncheon, the contestants slipped away, to remove 
superfluous collars, and to roll up their sleeves, and 
to splash cold, cold water on their heads. The grown- 
ups, meanwhile, all but a few lusty, sun-proof col- 
lege girls and energetic and devoted men, decided 
to await the finish of the race, seated in the cool 
comfort of the wide verandah. 

Soon after two o’clock, they all set out: the boys 
and girls, bare-headed and bare-armed, to paddle 
slowly up the sunny lake, the others to tramp by 
the longer, shadier route along the shore. The rest 
of the assembly watched them out of sight; then 
they settled themselves at their ease, to sew and 
read and gossip, until once more the boats came into 
view around the rocky barrier at the bend which 
cut the lake so nearly into two. 

Miss Julia, slim and dainty in her lace and muslin 
frock, and to all seeming wholly imperturbable, was 
a good deal annoyed, as time went on, to find her 
needle shaking in her fingers. Her eager little smile, 
bent upon her companion of the moment, totally 
concealed her real wish that he would subside into 
silence and allow her to focus her entire attention 
upon that bend in the wooded shore of the lake, upon 
the bend, and, even more, upon the thing which was 
to come around it. It seemed to her that her im- 


204 


BUDDIE 


patience had double the reason for its existence above 
that of any of the others. True, they all were kin 
to one or another of the contestants; but with her 
it was quite different. One boat held her all. Indeed, 
for the hour, Miss Julia felt almost as much related 
to Teresa as she did to Buddie. The past week when 
the girl had been wholly her own charge, had multi- 
plied Miss Julia’s love for her to many times its 
former volume. Teresa was not the sort of girl that 
one took passively. One either loved her, or else 
let her alone entirely. Beneath her placid, polite 
little smile, Miss Julia’s heart bumped proudly, 
while she recalled the two of them as they had pad- 
died past her, resting an instant on their oars to fling 
up their bare arms in gay salute, before they headed 
for the middle of the lake, and so on and on till they 
reached the bend. Teresa’s pigtails were knotted out 
of sight beneath a gay bandanna, and Buddie’s red 
head gleamed like a beacon in the sun. Neverthe- 
less, Miss Julia told herself quite simply that no 
other boat could show a sight one half so comely. 
As for the rest of it, they certainly did know how to 
row. How Daddy, stroke of his own ’varsity crew, 
would revel in the letter she would write to him 
about it! 

The man behind Miss Julia’s chair spoke suddenly. 

“Nasty-looking sky!” he said briefly. 

Forgetful of her companion, Miss Julia glanced 
up and over her right shoulder. A great gray bulk 
of cloud was climbing over the mountain opposite, 
its nearer curves stained with dull yellow, its hollows 
black with threatenings of wind. And, as Miss Julia 
watched it climbing higher, coming nearer, the man 
behind her spoke again. 


THE REGATTA 


205 


“There they come!” he said. 

Miss Julia dropped her eyes to the surface of the 
lake, now turned from blue to the tint of hardest 
steel. Around the bend came one boat and then, a 
good deal later, came another, and then, in swift 
succession, two more, and then a third. Heedless, 
for an instant, of the coming storm, Miss Julia held 
her breath and strained her eyes. Then, regardless 
of her needle, she clasped her hands in ecstasy. The 
foremost boat held two spots of vivid colour: 
Teresa’s gay bandanna, Buddie’s hair. 

The man behind her spoke once more. 

“Just in the nick of time!” he said. “It’s bound 
to be a race now, in good earnest.” 

And Miss Julia, listening, had a sharp realization 
that, under his apparent nonchalance, his voice held 
a new note, a note of downright fear. She glanced 
up and out. The cloud had crossed the mountain 
now, and seemed to be rushing down upon the lakei 
which was growing dark and angry beneath the un- 
earthly yellow light of storm. The water was rough- 
ening, too. It hissed and splashed and chattered 
against the stones below the verandah where they 
sat; and, out in the middle of the lake, the steely 
gray expanse was flecked here and there with a little, 
wavering line of white. 

“I don’t know of any place,” the man behind was 
saying, in answer to some question. “The shore is 
rocky, from one end to the other. Really, this is 
about the only landing that I know.” 

Miss Julia hated lying. Nevertheless, for the 
moment, she had a furious wish that state prison 
should await the man who dared speak out an ugly 
truth. And, after all, was it a truth? Outside of 


206 


BUDDIE 


books and the daily papers, did such things ever 
really happen? She gave a stout denial to the ques- 
tion; but she shut her teeth and held her breath in 
fear, as the foremost boat, Buddie’s boat, came near 
and nearer the rocky barrier where now the foam 
was splashing white. 

“Jove!” 

Something in the accent made Miss Julia shut her 
eyes in mortal terror of what they, open, might be 
forced to see. Then the seemingly interminable 
silence made her open them once more. The inter- 
val had been a good deal longer than she had been 
aware. Six boats had passed the rocky barrier, and 
the seventh was coming bravely on. Far, far in the 
lead of them all was Buddie; but the yellowish- 
gray cloud was now almost on top of him; around 
him the steel-gray mirror had turned to a white and 
sizzling foam, while already, only a little way above 
the rocky barricade, the water was lashed beneath 
the first spatter of the falling leaden drops. 

After that single word of exclamation, no one 
spoke again. They merely watched and waited in an 
utter silence, watched while the storm grew fiercer, 
waited to see it overwhelm entirely the little green 
boats, rushing at top speed, as it seemed, for shelter. 
The time appeared to them all unending. Only by 
checking off the oar-strokes against the ticking of 
their watches and their own pulse-beats could the 
on-lookers realize that the strain was not going on for 
hours and hours on end. And if they, looking on, 
felt the time agonizing, what must those children 
feel, afloat in such a sea? The men stuck their fists 
into their trouser pockets and chewed their lips, 
while they tramped to and fro on the verandah. 


THE REGATTA 


207 


One mother, at Miss Julia’s elbow, became hysterical 
and wept aloud; but Miss Julia just sat quiet, her 
eyes upon the foremost boat with its two little dabs 
of colour, her mind, as much as it was upon anything, 
on Daddy. 

But the boats were coming nearer now, Buddie 
still far in the lead; coming nearer and nearer to the 
verandah where she sat, racing neck and neck with 
the storm. And the landing-place was a good six 
hundred feet farther down, a floating bit of platform, 
now churning wildly up and down among the waves. 
Even if they reached it, could they ever land? 

The landing was out of sight from the verandah. 
As the first boats of the little fleet swept past the 
dining cabin, a half a dozen men, heedless of the rain, 
now pelting heavily around them, went dashing out 
from shelter, out along the woodland path which led 
down to the landing-place. 

Miss Julia sat staring after them in dull apathy. 
How could they bear the sight, she wondered stupidly. 
Those children were sure to drown, helpless in such 
a storm as that; how could strong men willingly 
look on upon the scene? Even at the distance where 
she sat, she shut her eyes tight, tight, and waited, 
white and motionless, amid the frightened stillness 
which had followed upon the first noisy patter of the 
rain. 

It seemed to her that she had sat there always; 
that the stillness had lasted from the beginning of 
all things up to the very end of all remotest time, 
until, of a sudden, the stillness was shattered by the 
crashing of the heavens, as a shaft of flame ran down 
a tree trunk, not twenty feet away. The smash and 
splintering of wood came hard upon the crashing of 


208 


BUDDIE 


the thunder, and with it came the renewed roaring 
of the rain. Above the rain, however, there arose an- 
other sound, a jovial and hilarious sound; Buddie’s 
voice, nonchalant, and yet pitched very high in his 
excitement. 

“Hullo there, everybody! We won out! It’s 
Teresa’s cup, though, for I’d never have put it through 
alone,” he shouted, as he came dashing up the steps, 
with Teresa, dripping, by his side. “It was a tight 
race, at the last; we only made it, by a boatlength. 
But look at us. Aunt Julia!” And he seemed, as he 
shook the rain drops from his drenched shoulders, 
to have no notion of the literal truth wherewith he 
spoke. “We came within a half an ace of being 
drowned.” 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


BUDDIE S SURPRISE 


“ p>UDDIE,” Miss Julia looked up from her letter, 

U as he came slowly up the steps; “perhaps, 
after all, it is about as well that you did n’t get 
yourself drowned, yesterday.” 

That was another good thing about Aunt Julia, 
Buddie reflected swiftly. She never made belated 
lamentations over the things that might have hap- 
pened. 

“Why?” he questioned, as casually as if Miss 
Julia’s shaking hands, her teeth chattering as in an 
ague, had not at last brought home to him, the day 
before, the fact that their little boat had been racing 
for something quite alien to a silver cup. 

Miss Julia laughed, while she tucked the letter 
into the front of her gown with an odd little air of 
haste. 

“Oh, several reasons. It would have been very 
horrid, you know.” Then, quite suddenly, her voice 
changed. “Buddie child, you’ll never realize what 
those minutes were to me. Did n’t you truly know 
the danger you were in?” 

“Not a bit, Aunt Julia; nor Teresa, either. We 
were rowing for the cup; we had n’t any time to 
think about our getting rained on.” 

“But, if you had capsized?” Miss Julia urged him, 
for, for some reason or other, she longed to bring the 


210 


BUDDIE 


matter home to him quite forcibly. It seemed hardly 
fair to her that the boy should have no notion of all 
the agonies which she had undergone. 

Buddie’s calm, however, remained impenetrable. 

“We could n’t; that is, not as long as we sat still, 
and kept our heads, and kept rowing,” he made op- 
timistic answer. “It’s only the fellows that get 
scared and forget to keep the boat head on and going, 
who get upset. If I ’d let myself go over in that 
storm, I ’d never have been able to face Daddy 
again, in all my life.” 

“Very likely not,” Miss Julia assented just a little 
dryly. Then once more her accent quickened. 
“But, Buddie, when you saw that fearful yellowish 
cloud? Were n’t you frightened then?” she queried. 

Buddie’s reply was matter of fact. 

“Did n’t see it, Aunt Julia. A fellow rowing in a 
race is n’t star-gazing, as a rule. Leastways, if he 
is, he does n’t generally win. But, I say, is n’t it a 
beauty cup?” 

And then Miss Julia gave it up. Instead, drop- 
ping the question of the peril of the day before, she 
came to matters of the present hour. 

“Buddie, I’ve just had a letter,” she said a little 
tremulously. 

Buddie’s composure was still invulnerable, even 
before the news that she had imparted. 

“So I saw,” he assured her. 

“Yes. It — it’s from — a friend,” Miss Julia 
told him. 

“The insurance man!” Buddie commented be- 
neath his breath. “That’s why she is so everlast- 
ingly rattled.” 

“He’s coming here, to-day,” Miss Julia added. 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE 


211 


Buddie became alert. 

“ Is he ? That ’s good . To stay ? ’ ’ 

“Only for a day. Still,” Miss Julia spoke as if to 
herself; “that is a great deal better than nothing.” 

“Sure,” Buddie assented, with an enthusiasm 
which surprised Miss Julia who, quite naturally, 
could not be aware of the interpretation Buddie had 
given to her agitation of a moment earlier. Indeed, 
Miss Julia still held fast to the wide-spread but 
erroneous theory that every healthy boy disdains 
romance. Buddie was as hard as nails; but he had 
come to feel an almost paternal interest in the heart- 
history of the insurance man, unknown and nameless 
though he was. “What’s his name?” he asked sud- 
denly, out of the mazes of his thought. 

Miss Julia hesitated, flushed. 

“Alan,” she said at last. 

Buddie nodded. 

“Same as Daddy’s middle one. It’s a good name, 
too; not so awfully common as some.” 

Miss Julia made a futile attempt to trace the work- 
ing of Buddie’s brain. Then she gave it up. Indeed, 
that was always the charm of Buddie, she admitted 
to herself. Most people were so obvious. 

“I probably shall need you to help entertain him,” 
she said, as she rose to her feet. 

“You will?” 

Miss Julia mistook the utter astonishment in Bud- 
die’s voice for extreme reluctance. She spoke with 
sudden decision. 

“Yes. Remember that, next to me, you are the 
host, you know. That’s what it means to be one 
of a family.” 

“I know that,” Buddie responded, with a good 


212 


BUDDIE 


temper quite unimpaired by the implied rebuke. 
“I only thought you’d want to keep him for your- 
self, especially as he can’t stay with you any longer 
than just the one day.” 

Miss Julia shook her head, laughing at some joke 
which Buddie, for the life of him, could not see. 

“No, Buddie. I promise that I’ll share him with 
you. I’m very fond of him; but I think it’s only 
fair that you should have a chance at him, too. I 
want you to take him out rowing. He’ll like to see 
how well you do it.” 

“And Teresa?” Buddie suggested loyally. 

Miss Julia, though, had already turned to go away. 
She spoke from over her shoulder. 

“We’ll see,” she said. 

Left to himself, Buddie straightway departed in 
search of Teresa, and together they discussed Miss 
Julia’s tidings in all their length and breadth. To- 
gether, too, they agreed that, from all signs, the 
expected guest must be the insurance man, Miss 
Julia’s friend of long ago. First, though, Teresa 
balked at the name. 

“Alan!” she said. “That doesn’t seem quite 
right.” 

“I thought you told me, the time you did tell me, 
that his name should never cross your lips,” Buddie 
reminded her. “Bet you it was because you did n’t 
know a single thing about it.” 

“I didn’t then,” Teresa admitted candidly. “I 
asked my mother, though, the very next day.” 

“Oh!” Buddie had the air of being slightly disap- 
pointed that Teresa’s honour was better than he had 
supposed. “Well, what was it?” 

Teresa frowned. 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE £13 

“That’s what I was trying to remember,” she 
said, after a little interval. 

Buddie felt it was time that he asserted his mascu- 
line superiority. Else, Teresa might go to taking 
on airs. 

“Well, there’s no especial sense in remembering, 
when I know. It’s Alan.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Aunt Julia said so.” 

Then Teresa scored. 

“ She did not. She only said that it was Alan who 
was coming. She never said a word about its being 
the insurance man. You made that up, yourself.” 

A crisis seemed to be close at hand. Indeed, both 
sets of nerves were still a little shaky, after the strain 
of the day before. Buddie averted that crisis by 
offering a fresh plank for division. 

“She has asked me to take him out in the boat,” 
he announced. 

Teresa’s face lighted. 

“Splendid! When will we go?” she asked eagerly. 

“The best boat doesn’t hold but two,” Buddie 
reminded her ruthlessly. Then, secure in this prac- 
tical assertion of his superiority, he relented just a 
little. “Perhaps she will ask you to show him the 
way to the grotto.” 

Teresa caught at this slight straw of consolation. 

“That would be lovely, Buddie. When does he 
get here?” 

“Two o’clock.” 

“Two. That shows he’s coming from the north,” 
Teresa commented shrewdly. “Maybe he has been 
up in the Klondyke, digging up gold nuggets. Is n’t 
it splendid, Buddie? And I suppose that now she ’s 


214 BUDDIE 

in her room, choosing out her softest raiment to do 
him honour.” 

“Women always do have to do such a lot of prink- 
ing,” Buddie asserted. 

“ So do men, only theirs never counts for anything, 
after they’ve done it. But Miss Julia is always 
lovely, even in the mornings. What do you suppose 
she will wear, Buddie?” 

“How should I know? Her best clothes, I sup- 
pose.” 

“Yes; but what sort?” Teresa persisted. “Of 
course, they must be long and trailing, with a flower 
in her belt as signal.” 

“For the train to stop?” Buddie queried, a little 
bit unkindly. 

“No, stupid! Signal to him that she is true to 
their old affection. And she’ll have a soft lace scarf 
about her shoulders, and carry a missal in her hands.” 

This time, Teresa’s romantic heart misled her. 
Buddie roared. 

“Missal be hanged, Teresa! What do you sup- 
pose a missal is, anyhow?” 

“I — I’m not just sure.” The voice came from 
between two very pink cheeks. 

“I am, then. A missal is some sort of a prayer 
book. What in thunder would Aunt Julia be doing 
with that, down at the station, or with a soft, trail- 
ing frock, either, for that matter?” 

However, as it chanced, Miss Julia did not go to 
the station to meet her friend. Teresa found that 
fact distinctly disappointing, as disappointing as 
was the simple tailor-made frock that Miss Julia 
was wearing, when she came to luncheon. After 
luncheon, she called Buddie to her side. 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE 


215 

“Buddie,” she said; “I ’m going to ask you to go 
to the station to meet him.” 

“All right. But how’ll I know him?” Buddie 
queried, not unnaturally. 

The query seemed to be a poser. To all appearing, 
Miss Julia had not thought of it before. 

“Why-y,” she said, a little vaguely; “I think 
you won’t have any trouble. He’s tall, and a little 
older than I am; and, besides, there won’t be so 
many men getting off the train here, as late in the 
season as it is.” 

Buddie nodded. 

“I didn’t think of that,” he said. “Well, I’ll 
make a bluff at it, anyhow. Can I take Ebenezer?” 

“Better not. He might get in the way of things,” 
Miss Julia advised. “Best be starting, Buddie. 
It’s almost time.” 

The station was only a few hundred feet away, 
and in full view of the verandah. Side by side, Miss 
Julia and Ebenezer watched Buddie, as he tramped 
off along the dusty road, stepped up upon the plat- 
form and took his stand there to await the coming 
of the train. Then, as there came a distant whistle, 
and then another close at hand, Miss Julia’s heart 
beat rapidly, and her hand shut tight upon Eben- 
ezer’s topmost tuft of hair. 

Buddie, meanwhile, as the train slid in, appeared 
to be expecting the awaited guest to be landed from 
the baggage car; that is, if one might judge from the 
place where he took his stand, as well as from the 
direction of his eyes. It was a full minute before 
he became aware of the tall man waiting at the 
other end of the platform. Ebenezer, six hundred 
feet away, was more alert than Buddie. He had 


216 


BUDDIE 


seen the expected guest alight, had seen and recog- 
nized him. With one great shriek, a shriek so full 
of joy as to be close akin to agony, the gray dog tore 
himself from Miss Julia’s hand and went hurtling 
down the road at fullest speed, barking as one pos- 
sessed. 

Frightened lest the dog throw himself before the 
moving train, Buddie sprang to catch him; but, for 
the once, Ebenezer was deaf to his master’s voice. 
Upsetting Buddie as casually as the ball upsets the 
ninepin in the alley, Ebenezer went tearing down 
the station platform and flung himself upon the 
guest, with embracing paws and flapping tongue 
and little cries and moans of more than human pleas- 
ure. And Buddie, prostrate on the cindery platform, 
turned his head to look. An instant later, he was on 
his feet and hurling himself on top of Ebenezer into 
the arms of the guest. 

“Daddy!” And then, for just a little while, 
Ebenezer had the conversation entirely to him- 
self. 

Buddie did take his father out in the boat, that 
afternoon; and Teresa, down at the landing to see 
them off, felt no repinings because she must be left 
behind. 

“It’s only for one day, you know, Teresa,” Bud- 
die consoled her, as they all walked down to the 
boats together. 

Teresa turned to the tall man who walked between 
herself and Buddie. 

“ Is that all, really? I thought, now it is you, you ’d 
come to stay.” 

Daddy caught swiftly at the hint of mystery in 
her phrase. 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE 217 

“If it had n’t been I, whom did you 'expect?” he 
asked her. 

Teresa cast a hasty, furtive glance at Miss Julia, 
walking at Buddie’s other hand. Then she laid her 
finger on her lip. 

“I’ll tell you, next time you come. But why 
can’t you stay now?” 

Daddy laughed, and, to Buddie’s anxious ear, the 
laugh had all its old, rumbling sound. Indeed, this 
brown and sturdy-looking man was not at all the 
sickly Daddy he had been bracing himself to see, 
granted, as began to seem unlikely, he ever did see 
Daddy again at all. 

“Remember I’m a run-away, this time,” he told 
Teresa. “I could only get a forty-eight-hour leave 
of absence. Buddie was so near me, though, since 
you all came up here, that I could n’t stand the 
temptation. But to-morrow night must find me 
back in camp.” 

“Must it really, Daddy?” Buddie’s voice was very 
wishful. 

“ Yes, son. It must. But I shall have had a chance 
to look you over, and see for myself how you are get- 
ting on. Besides, it is now nothing but a matter of 
time before I can come back to stay.” 

“How long?” Buddie demanded baldly. 

Daddy shook his head. 

“Buddie,” he answered; “when one gets to where 
he is in sight of the one goal he is working for, he 
does n’t waste any time in measuring the road; he 
just goes tramping off along it as fast as ever he can.” 

And that was all the answer to his question that 
Buddie was destined to get. 

Buddie and his father were out in the boat to- 


318 


BUDDIE 


gether, all that livelong afternoon. Sometimes 
Buddie rowed a little; but more often they drifted, 
drifted slowly to and fro beneath the yellowing 
autumn sun. It was Buddie who did nearly all the 
talking. Forgetful of his frequent letters, he told 
over to Daddy everything that had happened to him 
and to Ebenezer since the two of them had driven 
up to Miss Julia’s doorway on that far-off, memor- 
able afternoon. He told about Ebenezer and Pet- 
Lamb and the front stairs. He told about Mr. 
Baldwin and the mouse, and about the duckling, 
and about the circus. He told about Teresa and 
the playhouse and the fair and Rosa and the scouts 
and little Tootles. And then he told about Aunt 
Julia: how she never fussed, and always knew the 
things a fellow liked to eat; and how, when she 
really had to scold a fellow, she did it quick and had 
it over, without putting on all the frills about being 
so sorry and so disappointed and so surprised. And 
then he went back and told it all over again; but, 
first, he rowed up to the head of the lake, just to 
show Daddy how his stroke had improved, this last 
summer. 

And Daddy, leaning back and listening, took 
careful note of many things that Buddie did not say. 
He saw the sturdy, well-knit figure, saw the free, 
strong play of muscles beneath the boy’s thin shirt, 
saw the deep, even breathing which, plainer than 
any wordy argument, assured his doctor’s eye that 
all was well with Buddie’s inner man. And the outer 
man also was very good to watch, it seemed to Daddy, 
as his eyes swept over the well-poised head and met 
the answering, adoring gaze of two honest, level 
brown eyes which looked out at him from the frank 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE 


219 


and hearty, albeit snub-nosed, countenance of his 
sunburned son. Yes, all was well with Buddie’s 
body and, to all seeming, with his soul. 

Over and above all else, Daddy noted with some 
surprise the curiously close relation which seemed 
to exist between his half-sister and his son. Daddy 
had not looked for anything like that. He had been 
perfectly sure that Miss Julia would be very good 
to Buddie; her conscience and her loyalty had as- 
sured him of so much, at least. But that she would 
ever really care for Buddie, or that Buddie would 
care for her: that surpassed the limits of his expec- 
tation. And now, to all seeming, he found them a 
pair of most devoted chums. Of course, Buddie 
was a singularly lovable young rascal. Neverthe- 
less, Daddy, remembering Miss Julia’s old-time 
methodical ways of life, wondered if she too, like 
all the rest of the world, were changing. Had her 
greeting to himself, that noon, been more human in 
its cordiality than it ever had been of yore? That 
Miss Julia was astoundingly good to Buddie, Daddy, 
seeing them both together, could feel no sort of doubt. 
Perhaps, though, the time might come when the bene- 
fit would prove not to have been all on the one side. 

They stayed out in the boat until the shadows 
grew long and cold across the water. Then reluc- 
tantly Daddy gave the word for their return to 
shore. The afternoon, to all seeming, had been only 
about two minutes long, and Daddy had a sinister 
foreboding that the evening would not have any 
length at all. Indeed, it seemed to all of them that 
dinner was scarcely ended, when the clock struck 
ten; and Daddy, as in duty bound, hugged Buddie 
tight and then sent him off to bed. 


220 


BUDDIE 


Curiously enough, it was not until then that Daddy 
heard anything about the race of the day before. 
The man who had stood behind Miss Julia told him; 
and Daddy, while he listened, whitened through his 
tan. He almost ignored the man’s tribute to Bud- 
die’s pluck and skill, so intent was he in reconciling 
himself to the thought of the peril which, after all, 
had passed them by. 

The man, by the way, was a new-comer at the 
camp, that year, and so, to all intents and purposes, 
a stranger to Miss Julia. Miss Julia had ignored 
him at the first. Then, because he was lonely and 
looked harmless and evidently admired Buddie, she 
had relented and, from casual nods, had passed on to 
the stage of an occasional bit of talk with him about 
the weather, or the trains, or the latest frolic of the 
children. Her introducing him to Daddy, that night 
after Buddie had gone to bed, had been the result 
of the merest chance, a chance, though, which was 
destined to be far-reaching. 

Daddy, very human as he was, sat and listened 
smilingly to the stranger’s words about Buddie’s 
prowess in all the sports, about the boyish uncon- 
sciousness of any charm. The stranger liked boys. 
Moreover, as his talk showed, he understood them. 
The two men discussed certain boyish problems at 
great length, while Miss Julia sat by, silent and doing 
her level best to conceal the fact that she was deadly 
sleepy. All at once, the stranger seemed to come to 
realizing sense of her presence and of his own lack 
of manners. Turning, he addressed Miss Julia. 

“Buddie’s tranquil unconcern, yesterday,” he said, 
with an odd little smile; “reminds me of something I 
saw, not long ago, out in the Rocky Mountains.” 


BUDDIE’S SURPRISE 


221 


Miss Julia suppressed a yawn. When her jaws had 
relaxed from the strain she had been forced to put 
upon them, — 

“What was that?” she asked politely. 

The man’s eyes lighted, as at some amusing recol- 
lection. 

“It was up in the mountains, where they were 
building a flume. One of the engineers, an eastern 
man, Brooks MacDougall, was working there.” 

Miss Julia straightened in her chair. Her drowsi- 
ness had left her very suddenly. Nevertheless, it 
was doubtful whether she heard ten words of the 
long story which the stranger told her and at which 
Daddy laughed so heartily. When it was ended, — 

“One of the engineers?” she queried, harking back 
to the beginning of the story. 

“Yes, after a fashion. He hadn’t taken his de- 
gree; but he had made a good practical record, the 
past two or three years, even without it.” 

“You knew him, .then?” 

“Yes. We grew to be great chums.” 

Miss Julia apparently lost herself in contempla- 
tion of a broken thread in one of her lace cuffs. At 
last and rather slowly she spoke, a good deal as if 
she were forcing herself to show an interest she 
really did not feel. 

“Brooks MacDougall? It is an odd name; but 
I knew a man of that name, ever so long ago,” she 
said. “Isn’t it strange how names repeat them- 
selves?” 

The stranger nodded. 

“They do, though, and constantly. I shall see 
MacDougall in Denver, before long, and I shall ask 
him if he happens to know you.” 


BUDDIE 


222 

As if with an effort Miss Julia raised her eyes. 
Her voice, though, made the stranger feel how little 
his words counted. 

“If he does,” she assented very casually; “you 
might tell him how much I’d like to see him again.” 
Then she rose. “Ernest,” she said to her brother; 
“it is all hours of the night. I think, if you’ll ex- 
cuse me, I’d really better go to bed.” 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 

A MONG the things to be definitely settled, during 
Daddy’s brief visit to the lake, had been the 
fact that Buddie was quite too young to be con- 
firmed. 

Buddie himself had known his hours of yearning 
for the rite; less, it must be confessed, from any 
spiritual awakening, than because Eric was to be 
in this-year’s class. Buddie had a healthy antipathy 
to the idea of Eric’s getting ahead of him in any- 
thing whatever. It would have been a matter of 
solid satisfaction to Buddie to have the Bishop lay- 
ing hands on him before any of the Hamiltons: 
Teresa, Sandy, but most especially Eric. Eric had 
been so pleased about the approaching confirmation. 
He had even used it as an offset to Buddie’s cap- 
taincy of the boy scouts, had implied that it held 
within itself the greater honour. Buddie doubted. 
None the less, he would have been glad to have ac- 
cumulated for himself both honours. He could 
have measured them up a good deal better, if only 
they both had fallen on himself. 

However, Daddy’s fiat had gone forth, and Buddie, 
outwardly resigned, but mutinous within, was forced 
to abide by Daddy’s emphatic orders. 

During the weeks that were devoted to the sys- 
tematic training of the confirmation class, Buddie 


224 


BUDDIE 


drooped perceptibly. The fact was that Eric was 
increasingly smug over his own approaching sancti- 
fication, and was taking it out upon the other boys 
accordingly. For the most part, the other boys did 
not care so much as a row of pins; but Buddie did 
care. Still accordingly, Eric not only kept up the 
process of taking it out, but he also came to focus all 
his efforts upon Buddie. He only gained a partial 
suppression from the fact that, just at this very 
time, Buddie was chosen to lead the choir, while 
he himself, whose voice rivalled the strident katy- 
dids in the trees outside his window, was passed 
by utterly, when the new boys were tested for the 
choir. 

That next Sunday morning, Buddie felt his time 
had come. Furthermore, he intended that Eric 
should feel it, too. Therefore his eye was fixed on 
Eric’s face, as he came marching up the aisle, sing- 
ing with malicious emphasis, — 

“ Am I a soldier of the cross ? ” 

However, his triumph was short-lived. His eyes 
had been on Eric’s face, not on the steps before him; 
and his triumph ended abruptly, cut in two by 
Eric’s snicker when his rival, stumbling at the step, 
and hampered by his unaccustomed petticoats, 
landed within the chancel in an attitude by far more 
reverent than were the thoughts that surged and 
seethed within his brain. 

After that, for a season, honours were easy between 
the two boys. They became uneasy again, however, 
as also did the boys themselves, as the time for the 
Bishop’s visit drew near at hand. Then, quite 
unexpectedly to both of them, Buddie’s star arose 
and shot across the sky, vivid as a comet with the 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 225 

fieriest sort of tail. Miss Julia was going to have 
the Bishop stay at her house over night. 

Miss Julia, when she had sent out the invitation, 
had had no notion that she was working towards 
the glorification of her young nephew. Perhaps the 
idea might have crossed her brain, if only she had 
happened to remember that her young nephew’s 
name was Ernest Angell. However, four or five 
months of daily association with Buddie had blotted 
that fact completely from the tablet of her mind. 
Buddie was Buddie, she had learned, and most ir- 
responsibly human; he was neither earnest nor 
angelic in the very least. 

Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Miss Julia would 
have added an urgent postscript to her note of in- 
vitation, had she even dreamed of what the note 
and its acceptance meant to Buddie. In her igno- 
rance, she wrote quite simply, and with the degree 
of cordiality that one bestows on a friend so old that 
his fame counts for nothing in the relation. How- 
ever, as the Bishop had received no other invitation 
of any sort, he responded to Miss Julia promptly 
and with a gratified acceptance. He knew her hos- 
pitality. And Buddie, in consequence of his accept- 
ance, trod on air. 

“I could n’t very well help asking him, you know,” 
Miss Julia said to Buddie in needless explanation, 
after she had read the Bishop’s note out loud. “He 
is such an old, old friend; he went to school with 
Daddy, and we ’ve always known him. Besides, 
with measles at the rectory, they really could n’t 
have him there, and there did n’t seem to be any 
other place for him to go.” 

Her last words had almost the flavour of an 


BUDDIE 


apology. Buddie accepted the apology in gratitude, 
although he did not need it in the least. His cup of 
content was full enough without it. However, it 
added one more arrow to the quiver he was gather- 
ing up to use on Eric. The Bishop was something; 
but, even more than the Bishop, there was the un- 
deniable fact that Miss Julia had apologized, apolo- 
gized to himself, Buddie Angell, for the need of in- 
flicting a mere Bishop upon his society. Buddie 
drew a long sigh of absolute content. Nothing less 
than Eric’s sudden ordination to the priesthood 
could ever put him on his legs again. 

The good Bishop himself would have known no 
small measure of delight, could he have been aware 
of the war that raged about his coming. Between 
his lawn sleeves and his official gaiters, there throbbed 
the heart of a veritable boy. His life was a curious 
monotony of roast fowl and distant adulation. The 
fact that two small and highly unregenerate young- 
sters were ready to come to fisticuffs about his im- 
pending visitation would have set him off into roars 
of laughter. Eric he had never seen; but of Buddie 
he had the keenest sort of a remembrance. No 
sane and human man who had had the pleasure of 
seeing the serious-minded Mr. Baldwin valiantly 
rise up to slay the mouse could ever have forgotten 
his debt of gratitude to the young reprobate who 
had set that mouse in motion. The Bishop remem- 
bered Buddie well. His memory stopped short, 
though, before it came to Ebenezer. 

The confirmation was on a Wednesday evening 
in October. The Bishop arrived just in season for 
afternoon tea; and Miss Julia, from some vague 
theory of reverence, decided to banish Pet-Lamb 



The Bishop arrived just in season for afternoon tea. 
Page 226. 






EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP m 


from the function. Unhappily, however, Pet- 
Lamb had theories of her own concerning reverence. 
She wailed aloud to be permitted to enter the Bish- 
op’s presence, she clawed at doors and at the hem 
of Lena’s frock. Finally, as the time went on and 
the clinking of cups behind closed doors assured her 
that the tea was disappearing, she summoned to her 
rescue all of her feline agility. She climbed upon a 
chair, set close outside the door; and, next time that 
Lena entered the room with more hot muffins in her 
hand, Pet-Lamb entered, too, riding triumphantly 
on Lena’s back at the exact spot between the shoul- 
ders where only an alien hand, and that a firm one, 
could dislodge her. It was an alien hand, and that 
the Bishop’s, which finally dislodged her. Miss 
Julia protested and apologized; but Pet-Lamb was 
infinitely better mannered. She merely showed her 
gratitude, a gratitude which manifested itself by 
rubbing against the Bishop’s gaiters and covering 
them with all the white hairs that were left over 
from a belated moulting. 

Miss Julia thanked her lucky stars, all things con- 
sidered, that Buddie had not been on hand for tea. 
The next thing, had he been present, would have 
been a demand for the admission of Ebenezer, and 
Ebenezer’s table manners were still a little at loose 
ends. She thanked her lucky stars again when 
Buddie turned up, promptly on time, at the early 
dinner which the hour for the confirmation service 
had rendered necessary. Buddie, to all appearing, 
had decided to put his best foot forward, on the 
great occasion of having a Bishop sit beside him at 
the table. Quite of his own accord, he had groomed 
himself with the utmost care; he had put on his 


228 


BUDDIE 


stiff est shirt, his widest collar, his dinner jacket and 
even his brand-new patent leather pumps. He even, 
and Miss Julia gasped at the discovery, was wearing 
a fat red rose pinned in his buttonhole. Miss Julia 
could not be expected to be aware that all this finery, 
however, had been put on, not for the gratification 
of their guest, the Bishop, but for the later influence 
on Eric who could not fail to see him when, just 
before the service, he sauntered into the choir-room 
where, for the once, both choir and confirmation 
class must be herded indiscriminately. 

At the table, the Bishop led the talk away from 
matters that concerned the diocese, matters that 
Miss Julia had broached, as in duty bound. In- 
stead, he talked delightfully of rowing, and of the 
Yale-Harvard game he had seen, at his class re- 
union, and of his pet horse, Pickwick, who always 
knew when Sunday came and he had to allow every- 
thing to pass him on the road. 

“I believe,” the Bishop remarked, from above 
the cheese; “that I like every animal in the world 
but one. I don’t like dogs at all; in fact, I must con- 
fess that I ’m afraid of them.” 

And Buddie, hearing, rejoiced that Ebenezer had 
been out in the woods with him from school time up 
to the hour when it had been necessary to dress for 
dinner. During the dinner and immediately after, 
there was never any need to question Ebenezer’s 
whereabouts. The cook always settled that. So 
expert a dish-scraper, so capacious a waste-pail was 
sure to find a welcome in any well-conducted kitchen. 

As they arose from the table, Miss Julia turned 
to the Bishop, with a deferential little smile which 
seemed intended to remind him that their hour of 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 229 


equality was at an end, that now was the time for 
him to mount his pedestal. 

“Buddie is in the choir,” she said. “He has to go 
early, and I am going down with him. I may be 
needed to help the girls put on their veils. Besides, 
you will like a little time to yourself before the 
service.” 

The Bishop sought to protest a little. 

“But — ” he was beginning. 

Miss Julia waved his words aside. 

“Lena will ring the bell in the upper hall,” she 
told him; “when the carriage is ready. It should be 
about half an hour.” And, marshalling the resplend- 
ent Buddie before her, she departed and left the 
Bishop to his meditations. 

Buddie also sought to protest a little. 

“Hang it, Aunt Julia! There’s lots of time. 
Who wants to stand around that snuffy choir- 
room, half the evening?” he rebelled, for indeed it 
was vexatious to have his gorgeous and triumphal 
entry upon Eric’s field of vision spoiled in such a 
way as that. 

But Miss Julia, for the once, was obdurate. 

“Hush, Buddie dear! You will disturb the 
Bishop,” she warned him swiftly. “It is best for us 
to go down early, so run up and change your coat, 
while I put on my hat.” 

“Change my coat!” Buddie echoed stonily. 

“Yes. You can’t wear that one into church.” 

“Why not? Under my cassock, it won’t show,” 
Buddie argued. 

Miss Julia wondered a little that Buddie, who usu- 
ally disregarded finery completely, should be so very 
insistent. She laughed, though, as she answered. 


230 


BUDDIE 


“As a general thing, Buddie, people don’t wear 
evening clothes to church,” she told him. 

And Buddie, who knew the quality of her differ- 
ent laughs, forebore to argue further. Instead, he 
submitted to the eclipsing of his dreamed-of glories, 
marched up the stairs on his heels, regardless of the 
meditations of the Bishop, and changed back again 
into his customary raiment. Then, as outlet for his 
injured feelings, he descended by way of the back 
stairs and kitchen, in order to bestow a tempestuous 
hug on Ebenezer. But Ebenezer, his mind upon the 
dripping-pans, received him casually. Buddie, his 
feelings injured anew, went to join Miss Julia, wait- 
ing in the front hall. By this fresh injury to his 
feelings, moreover, he was quite too much upset to 
heed the fact that he had neglected to shut any of 
the doors behind him. 

Miss Julia was needed to help the girls put on their 
veils, it proved. She spent the busiest sort of a 
half-hour, after she reached the church. Indeed, 
she would have been glad of a half-hour longer; and 
it seemed to her no time at all before the organ be- 
gan to peal forth the voluntary, and it was neces- 
sary for her to go out and take her place among the 
waiting congregation. Even then, as she bowed 
her head devoutly, her brain was far more full of 
such small details as tulle and hairpins and refrac- 
tory buttons than it was of the solemn rite ahead of 
her. Resolutely and devoutly, Miss Julia clasped 
her hands until they pinched each other, and set 
herself to herd back her wandering thoughts. As 
result, they wandered a good deal faster and a good 
deal farther. After floundering about quite aim- 
lessly for a while, they came to rest upon the clatter 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 231 

of knives and plates, the fragrance of stale cooking 
which had been wafted to her, just as Buddie had 
joined her in the hall. She hoped most earnestly 
that they had not found their way up to the Bishop’s 
room, to disturb him in his before-the-service medi- 
tations. For her part, she found even the memory 
of them most disturbing. By the way, where was 
the Bishop? 

Miss Julia’s wandering attention came back to 
the present with a little jerk. In fact, where was 
everybody? Everybody, that is, who should have 
been filling up the chancel? Instead, the chancel 
was quite empty, save for the organist who had 
played his voluntary twice over, and now was im- 
provising on the theme of his earliest five-finger 
exercises. He had finished with all the heavier 
stops, by the time Miss Julia had returned to her 
present surroundings, and now he was twiddling 
two fingers, while the organ shrilled like a flute in a 
bad ague. Above and behind the meagre fluting, 
Miss Julia was able to make out another sound, inter- 
mittent and hilarious, the sound of merry choir-boys 
who are being instructed to repress their merriment. 
What in the world was happening? Buddie had had 
his cotta on, long before she had come out of the 
choir-room. Why did they not start the processional? 

As if in answer to the question, the choir-room 
door opened ever so slightly, and the face of the 
rector, looking abnormally round and red above his 
surplice, appeared within the crack. His eyes 
moved slowly along the ranks of the pews, until 
they came to rest upon Miss Julia’s face. Resting, 
they became appealing; and the appeal was doubled 
by means of a beckoning forefinger. 


232 


BUDDIE 


Quite at a loss to explain this ghostly admonition 
and too much astounded to go forth to meet it. Miss 
Julia sat and stared back at the rector. The rector, 
too, appeared to be astounded about something, and 
to have parted with all his wonted presence of mind 
in consequence. He beckoned once more, quite 
frantically, this time. Then, as that had no effect 
upon Miss Julia, he pushed his face close into the 
door-crack and fell to gesticulating violently with his 
lips. If only Miss Julia had been a deaf-mute and 
trained accordingly, she would have had no trouble 
in making out his question, — 

“ Where — is — the — Bishop? ” 

Instead, she sat there, rigid, and stared back again, 
while she tried in vain to recall her first-aid lectures 
and remember what they had said about insanity. 

At last, the rector gave it up. He paused in his 
gesticulations and looked about him in search of an 
usher, or a warden, or something else that could be 
pressed into service in the crisis. Then, after a 
vain search, the door clicked to behind him. There 
was a short delay. Then once more the door swung 
open and Eric Hamilton came forth, clad in his best 
clothes and wrapped in a mantle of self-conscious- 
ness that seemed to himself most exquisite. His 
very shoes creaked forth the message of his own im- 
portance, as he tiptoed elaborately across the church 
and into Miss Julia’s pew. 

“He says would you please tell him where in the 
world is the Bishop?” was the question Eric, in a 
stentorian whisper, delivered into Miss Julia’s up- 
turned ear. 

“I don’t know, Eric,” Miss Julia answered 
blankly. “I have n’t got him. Wait!!” 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 233 

But she was too late. Eric was already tiptoeing 
back again, to bear her answer to the waiting rector. 
He was gone for just a moment only. Then he re- 
appeared, his sense of importance greater than ever, 
and his boots creaking with even more violence than 
before. 

“He says you did have him, at dinner time,” Eric 
reported, and, by now, his whisper could be heard 
plainly in the outer portals of the sanctuary. “And 
would you mind going back to see what ’s got him? 
He ’s waited more than twenty minutes now, and 
he ’s very sure it must be something serious.” 

“Why hasn’t he sent Buddie, then?” Miss Julia 
queried. 

Eric plainly gloated over the tenor of his own 
reply. 

“He would have, he said, Miss Julia; but he said, 
in a case like this, he felt he ought to send some one 
a little more reliable.” And then, with the blushing 
Miss Julia at his heels, Eric led the way out of church 
once more, his face alight with his contented surety 
that Buddie and the choir and even the confirma- 
tion service, granted that the Bishop finally ap- 
peared and it came off, would fall into total insigni- 
ficance beside the earlier sensation of which he alone 
had been the outward and visible sign. 

Miss Julia’s house was a long half-mile from the 
church door. As a rule, she did not mind the dis- 
tance in the least; but, to-night, the way seemed to 
her interminable. With each new step she took 
along it, too, a new fear shot up into her mind, and 
the fears, one and all, concerned the Bishop. Had 
the cherries in the ice cream poisoned him? Had he 
fallen down the stairs and broken a good many of 


234 


BUDDIE 


his bones? Had he had an apoplexy? Had he sud- 
denly gone out of his ecclesiastical mind? Had 
he — And each one of the hods branched out into 
at least a dozen minor possibilities. Miss Julia was 
thirty-one years and nine months old, and it was at 
least half that time since she had run a race. Never- 
theless, it is no exaggeration to say that she sprinted, 
all along the latter half of the way home. 

The house, as she turned in across the lawn, looked 
peaceful, innocent of holding any evil thing. The 
usual lights burned in just the usual places. The 
usual hum of low voices came from the servants’ 
wing; and — Was it, or was it not the dim form of 
the carriage which stood waiting in the drive, a 
stone’s throw from the closed front door? 

The driver touched his hat. 

“I ’m waiting here since half an hour, Miss Ten- 
ney,” he told her, as if to ward off from himself any 
hint of blame. “His Riverence seems a little slow 
in coming down.” 

Miss Julia fumbled for her latchkey, opened the 
door, walked in. The place was just as she had left 
it, quiet, peaceful, orderly. No Bishop, though, was 
to be seen; the only sign of life was Ebenezer, lying 
on the top step of the stairway, Ebenezer, crouched 
low and glaring sulky defiance at an invisible some- 
thing behind the closed door above him, the door of 
the best guestroom, Miss Julia noted swiftly, the 
Bishop’s door. The knob of the outside door was 
still in her hand, as she made the discovery. The 
latch clicked sharply, as she digested the discovery 
which she had made. 

At the unexpected sound from below, the door 
above opened slightly, and a voice, the Bishop’s 


EBENEZER AND THE BISHOP 235 


voice, cultured and courteous, but just now very 
full of trouble, proceeded from the crack. 

“Will the person who is down there be good enough 
to call off the dog?” it said. “He appears to have 
mistaken me for a burglar, and he won’t allow me to 
go down the stairs. And really, you know,” the 
voice became appealing in its explanation; “it is n’t 
at all decent for the Bishop to be a good half-hour 
late at church.” 

Ebenezer, always loyal to the interests of his 
master, had contrived to put Buddie once more at 
the bull’s-eye of the situation. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


THE BURGLARS 

T HE long stretch of tin roof outside of Buddie’s 
window had been a great source of comfort 
to him, during the hot nights of summer. Covering 
in a wide verandah, it was comparatively flat and 
level, furnishing a goodly promenade to any one 
who cared to walk abroad at night. The first time 
Buddie had yielded to its temptations, the moon- 
light had lain cool and white on the lawn below, 
and Buddie’s room, still sweltering in the concen- 
trated heat of the long June day, had seemed to 
him a cooking oven, rather than a place for sleep. 
Lifting the mosquito screen, he had stepped out 
into the cool, dewy night. 

To Buddie, that night was always memorable. 
The moon was at its full; down on the lawn under 
the trees, the fireflies were flashing to and fro, vying 
in brightness with the stars above. From far away 
beyond the Hamilton orchard came the distant 
wail of the whip-poor-will, its melancholy shrillness 
dominating all the fainter, more cheery noises of 
the night. Buddie walked the length of the roof 
and back again. Then, fearful lest the crackling 
of the tin beneath his tread and the whimpering of 
Ebenezer, abandoned in the room behind him, 
should awake Miss Julia, he went back to the win- 
dow and sat down beside it, his arm thrown up 


THE BURGLARS 237 

across the ledge, in sociable communion with Eben- 
ezer, crouched against the screen within. 

He sat there long, watching the night and listen- 
ing to it, feeling himself a part of it all; sat there 
until his eyes grew heavy with sleep. Then, quite 
reluctantly, he opened the screen and went back 
into the room once more. After the outside cool- 
ness, the clean freshness of the summer night, the 
place seemed to him more than ever stifling. Fling- 
ing himself upon the bed, he flapped about and 
turned and twisted, until the pillows looked like 
lumps of lead and the sheets were ropes. Then, 
with a bounce, he sprang to his feet. The very 
thing! Taking the smaller piece of the mattress 
under one arm, a pillow underneath the other and 
dragging a sheet in his teeth, he once more opened 
the screen, stepped through it and closed it after 
him. Two minutes later, Buddie was fast asleep 
in his improvised bed upon the flat tin roof. 

Of course, Miss Julia found it out, next day. Not 
that Buddie made any effort, though, to keep the 
matter secret. It was only that he had things of 
more importance to talk about than how he had 
spent his night. The maid, however, when she 
went to do his room, had been prompt to discover, 
first the loss, and then the present whereabouts, 
of Buddie’s extra bedding; arid she reported the 
discoveries to Miss Julia. 

Miss Julia, quite as promptly, had it out with 
Buddie. It might be cooler; but it was very danger- 
ous. What if he rolled off, in the night? Buddie, 
very grave at the suggestion, gave her his word of 
honour that he would not roll off. Then what if 
Ebenezer, left alone, should scratch a hole in the 


238 


BUDDIE 


screen and go out to join his master, and should 
tumble off the edge? Buddie, still more grave at 
this second suggestion, promised Miss Julia on his 
solemn honour that he would always barricade the 
window with a chair. Besides, had she any notion 
how jolly it was to sleep outside, with nothing 
between one’s pillow and the stars? As for catch- 
ing cold, Daddy had told ever and ever so many 
people they must sleep outside, even people that 
had bad coughs. 

That last statement set Miss Julia to thinking. 
For two or three days, she thought quite industri- 
ously. Meanwhile, the moon waned and the nights 
grew cooler, and Buddie decided that a bed with 
springs was a good deal better, after all. Ebenezer, 
moreover, agreed with Buddie. His vigils by the 
open window had not been very restful; and he 
gave a gigantic sigh of full content, the night he 
once more stretched himself out in bed at Buddie’s 
side. His content, though, was short-lived. After 
a night or two, the weather turned once more; it 
was hotter than ever and by far more sultry. Bud- 
die took to the roof again with all speed, and Eben- 
ezer was once more left to mourn alone. 

Next morning, Miss Julia spoke out and told her 
thoughts. Why not have an out-door cubby on 
the roof, so that Buddie could sleep out there, all 
summer long, in wet nights as well as dry? Buddie 
put a few questions; then he vetoed the plan with 
emphasis. Half the charm of his own arrange- 
ments had lain in their casualness, in their picnic- 
like quality. Done in this way, it was next best 
to camping out. Done under a roof, with movable 
lattice screens for sides and a real bed with springs. 


THE BURGLARS 


239 


it would be nothing in the world but sleeping in a 
leaky closet. No; he really would not roll off. He 
would promise always to keep his head at the top 
side, next the wall. He would even tie the pillow 
to the chair inside the room. 

In the final end, Miss Julia made a compromise. 
If Buddie wished to move his bedding in and out, 
each night, let him. If he wished to have his face 
bared to the stars, let him. The verandah was 
completely hidden from the street; besides, there 
was nothing socially incriminating about a blanket 
and a pillow, or even about a sleeping suit of blue 
pongee. On the other hand, Buddie must give in 
and have an awning which, in case of need, could 
be let down above his head. Moreover, there must 
be a strong, close railing built around the roof. 
Otherwise, Miss Julia would say farewell to sleep 
until the winter snows drove Buddie back into his 
room once more. 

And Buddie, who saw the common sense which 
underlay Miss Julia’s two conditions, yielded to 
them, and added a new condition of his own: that 
the railing should be high enough to make it safe 
for Ebenezer to sleep out on the roof beside him. 

However, Ebenezer proved quite ungrateful for 
the privilege. So long as Buddie shut him up alone 
in the room, Ebenezer slept with his gray muzzle 
pressed close against the wire mosquito netting, 
slept with one ear cocked upward, ready for any 
sudden summons from his master. No sooner was 
the railing finished, though, and Ebenezer given the 
freedom of the roof, than Ebenezer promptly changed 
his tactics. Once or twice in the night, he arose, 
stepped through the window where the screen had 


240 


BUDDIE 


been adjusted to fit his exact height, and perambu- 
lated the length and breadth of the roof to assure 
himself that all was well with his young master. 
Then, that done, he retired to his own bed chamber 
once more, stretched himself out on the least dis- 
mantled portion of the bed, and fell to snoring 
lustily. Moreover, such is the force of habit on us 
all that, after the first few nights, Miss Julia, light 
sleeper that she was, no longer heeded the muffled 
clatter of the tin beneath Ebenezer’s hairy heels. 

At first, on the hottest nights, and then, as time 
ran on, every night, Buddie dragged his apology 
for a bed out to the roof and slept upon it as only 
a healthy boy can sleep and even then only in the 
open air. His two weeks at the lake had seemed to 
him days of bliss and nights of dire imprisonment. 
No sooner was he back at home once more, although 
by then the nights were growing chilly, than he 
took up his old out-door habit again, took it up and 
maintained it, while the chill turned into frost, 
while his summer blankets came to seem no heavier 
than a bit of cheesecloth. Miss Julia, who had 
had a long talk with Daddy, merely smiled a little, 
produced a heap of scarlet blankets, and ordered a 
sleeping suit of flannel. Open air was cheap and 
healthy. Buddie should revel in it just as long as 
he should choose. For her own part, four open 
windows and a roof above her head were a good 
enough setting for her dreams. 

It seemed to Buddie, as he dragged his bedding 
out across the window sill, one late October night, 
that he had never known such blackness, so thick 
and so very velvety. It was the dark of the moon, 
and cloudy withal, and the trees close about the 


THE BURGLARS 


241 


house still held their leaves, for they were aged 
oaks and kept their coats on till the winter came. 
From the lighted room behind him, a flaring cone 
cut across the roof of the verandah, shining upon 
his bed, but leaving the night around it in a black- 
ness all the greater by comparison. 

Buddie glanced up at the inky sky, out at the 
inky night, then fell to making up his bed with a 
deftness born of many nights of practise. That 
done, he went back into his room to undress and 
turn off the lights. Just as his hand was on the 
switch, however, he bethought himself of an apple 
he had brought up to his room, that noon. More- 
over, with the demand for greater luxury which 
associates itself with pillows and bedtime and all 
that, he hunted out his knife from the chaos of his 
pockets. The gnawing of an apple went with the 
prosaic light of day. Night and its romance de- 
manded peeling and then throwing away the core. 

Despite the greater deliberation of the process, 
it seemed to Buddie that the apple lasted a very 
little while. Of course, it had taken a little longer 
to peel it, underneath the blankets; the corners got 
in the way of one’s knife, and held one’s elbows 
down so tightly. Still, the apple was pared and 
eaten in far too short a time; and then Buddie, 
heedless of the problem concerned in its digestion, 
shut his knife, and then, by far too sleepy to hunt a 
safe place to lay it down, went sliding off through 
dreamland, with the knife clasped tight in his left 
fist. 

For three or four hours, he slept on soundly. 
Then, all at once, something, perhaps the conscious- 
ness of the large red apple, aroused him with a jerk. 


242 


BUDDIE 


He wakened with the feeling that comes to each of 
us now and then, the feeling that he had not really 
been asleep at all, so alert was he, so wide awake in 
every nerve and sense and muscle. How inky black 
the night was ! And how still ! And yet — 

Buddie stiffened, underneath his blankets, stif- 
fened not with terror, mind you, but with a stretched 
attention which was seeking to magnify the faintest 
hint into an actual fact. Was that a footstep that 
he had heard, down on the gravel path below? 
Was there a soft, soft whispering of the box hedge 
in the garden, as if something had brushed along 
against it? Then Buddie’s stiffening relaxed, and 
he smiled at the inky blackness overhead. Cats, 
most likely. He would roll over on the other side 
and go to sleep. 

Nevertheless, he accomplished his rolling over, 
usually a noisy process on that crackling roof, with 
an utter stillness that vied with the silence of the 
night around him. Instead of going back to sleep, 
as he had intended, though, he found himself wider 
awake than ever, his senses even more alert. Not 
that he was at all nervous, he assured himself val- 
iantly. He was only wondering what cats were 
doing there in paths so usually guarded by Eben- 
ezer’s watchful eye. 

Far off across the darkness, a dog barked lustily. 
Another, near at hand, replied, and others still took 
up the chorus. Buddie wondered a little that 
Ebenezer did not join, and start a fugue upon his 
own account; but Ebenezer ’s peaceful snores and 
gurglings went on, unbroken. Then the canine 
chorus died away, to be replaced by a quiet so 
intense, so absolute, that perforce Buddie’s nerves 


THE BURGLARS 243 

grew quiet with it, and sleep came creeping back 
again towards his drowsy eyes. 

Towards, but not into, them. With a snap, he 
was wide awake once more, every nerve and muscle 
taut with expectation. What was that rustle in 
the grass? That snapping of a twig? That faint, 
faint whimper of the gravel, as one pebble ground 
against the surface of another? That was no cat. 
It was by far too painstaking in its extreme deliber- 
ation. 

Buddie’s first impulse was to sit up and look 
about him. Then he remembered that he could see 
absolutely nothing in such darkness; and that any 
stir he made would probably set the roof to crack- 
ling beneath him, and so frighten away the prowler, 
beast, or human. And Buddie had no wish to 
frighten him away — yet. That might come later, 
Buddie admitted candidly to himself. For the 
present, though, he was a good deal more interested 
in finding out what manner of prowler it might be, 
than in frightening him away. For the time being, 
curiosity far outweighed fear. Besides, it would be 
impossible to thrill Eric with a story that stopped 
short at its beginning, instead of working up and 
up to the thrilling climax Fate had destined for it. 
Properly developed, even a cat might have a climax, 
but not a human visitor who merely creaked a little 
and then went his way. Buddie lay still and 
listened, alert for what should happen next. 

For quite a long time, it seemed to him that 
nothing would happen next. Save for the usual 
petty noises of the night, the stillness was unbroken, 
and, to Buddie’s rage, he felt sleep creeping over 
him again. It would have been most ignominious 


£44 


BUDDIE 


to have gone to sleep in such a crisis as the one 
which instinctively he felt he faced; and yet his 
eyes grew heavy and his brain grew dull increasingly. 
In vain he twined his legs into uncomfortable knots; 
in vain he twisted his ear and bit the ends of all his 
fingers. The ignominious fact would not be downed; 
he was almost asleep, and, within a minute or two, 
unless something happened, he would be quite so. 
He fell to chewing his thumb remorselessly. 

And then, all at once, something did happen, a 
whisper, low, but sounding clear in the thick black 
stillness of the night. 

“Shall we try it now, Jim?” 

“Right? Are you ready?” 

“Yep. Got your little namesake?” 

“O. K. It’s the narrow window, right ahead of 
us.” 

Forgetful of the rights of his thumb to be con- 
sidered, Buddie shut his teeth upon it with a violence 
which nearly forced a cry out of him against his will. 
The narrow window was the one just underneath 
him, a window of the closet where Miss Julia kept 
the little safe that held the silver. And the ser- 
vants’ wing was quite at the other side of the house; 
its windows opened, not upon the garden, but on 
the bit of lawn that faced the now deserted stables 
and the icehouse. If this sudden realization at the 
first gave Buddie just a little pang, the pang swiftly 
was forgotten in the proud knowledge that on him 
alone rested the protection of all this end of the 
house. It was his chance. If only Ebenezer would 
not wake up and spoil it all! His chance! But 
how in the world should he meet it? Heroes, as a 
rule, did not go forth to conquest, clad in flannel 


THE BURGLARS 


m 


sleeping suits and girded with a scarlet blanket. A 
burglar, for this unmistakably was a burglar and, 
on his own confession, armed with the conventional 
jimmy of his calling, a burglar need not be too 
stout-hearted not to quail at such a vision as Buddie 
instinctively realized that he was doomed to pre- 
sent. Awful if, instead of fleeing, the burglar should 
turn on him and trounce him, and spank him with 
the jimmy! From such an anticlimax, Buddie felt 
he must guard himself at almost any cost. 

But the whispering kept on. It was nearer now, 
yet so much more low that Buddie, strain his ears 
as he would, could catch only an occasional word. 

“Then while I front lawn.” 

“ signal.” 

in at the window out 

“Get done ready?” 

“Yes.” 

“Yes.” 

“In case a dog 

“Shoot 

Buddie felt his anger rising until he came near 
to choking with it. Shoot Ebenezer! Never! He 
would shoot them first, both of them, and dead! 
Ebenezer ! His anger grew, but without the slightest 
fear. Ebenezer was shut up in his room, and safe. 
Even if he waked and growled a little, he was out of 
range of their shots. They were in range, though, 
and — A new thought struck him, and with a regret. 
If only he could get at his rifle, Teresa’s rifle, now 
hanging on the wall above his table ! He would 
show them what it was to shoot. Had n’t the West 
Pointer complimented him, only last week, upon 
his marksmanship? Of course, it never had occurred 


246 


BUDDIE 


to him before that a man was a fair target; but a 
burglar was a different matter, especially a burglar 
who uttered threats concerning Ebenezer. Buddie’s 
fingers itched to get at his gun. If ever a boy scout 
had a plain duty, it was now, when Miss Julia and 
Miss Julia’s safe were alike defenceless, alike de- 
pendent upon him. 

The gun, though, was inside his room. For all 
practical purposes, it might as well have been in 
the heart of mountainous Thibet. It would be im- 
possible to get it, without making all sorts of a racket. 
Of course, that would scare away the burglar; and, by 
now, Buddie’s fighting blood was up. The broken bit 
of threat concerning Ebenezer had made him thirstful, 
not for safety for himself and the house, but for cap- 
ture, for taking the man red-handed, jimmy and all. 
But how could one achieve it, perched on a clattery 
tin roof, armed only with a scarlet blanket and a 
pillow? Of course, there was the knife, still clutched 
in his left hand. It had one very big blade, and a 
saw and a corkscrew; but in order to get full benefit 
of its resources, one would be obliged to come to 
closer quarters than Buddie felt his flannel sleeping 
suit could justify. 

He listened again. The whispering had ceased 
entirely. In place of it, he could make out the rustle 
of steps, two sets of steps, the one moving softly out 
towards the front lawn, the other creeping stealthily 
to the narrow window just underneath his room. In- 
deed, the corner of his room and the corner of the 
closet into which the narrow window opened formed 
the outer angle of the house, the angle against which 
came the wide verandah and the wide tin roof. By 
creeping, creeping noiselessly to the very edge of 


THE BURGLARS 


247 


the roof, then, and by peering down from above the 
rail, it might be possible, even in the thick darkness, 
to get a glimpse of the intruder at his work, and to 
discover what manner of man he was, what sort of 
an antagonist, given close quarters, he would prove 
to be. 

Buddie’s manhood throbbed within him at the 
thought. Something else throbbed within him, too: 
a keen desire to see the jimmy. He could plan up 
so much better fight, if only he could get the faintest 
notion of what a jimmy really was. The name 
sounded harmless; but names were misleading now 
and then, as he knew to his cost. Anyway, no harm 
in finding out. With care, he could slide down to 
the rail, without making a breath of noise. Of course, 
if the roof crackled, it would all be up. However, 
if he knew himself, the roof would not crackle, not if 
he were Buddie Angell and a scout, not if he had 
to take his bed along with him to muffle the sound. 

And take his bed along with him, Buddie did. 
By dint of lying still and stiff, and pushing and pull- 
ing with his two hands against every projection of 
the window casing at his side, Buddie contrived to 
slide himself, bed and all, quite noiselessly down 
to the edge of the roof. There, kneeling up in the 
thick darkness, he leaned over the rail and peered 
down. Something blacker than the darkness was 
moving below the window, something large and 
strong — 

There came the flash of a small electric searchlight 
from below. It showed the man the outlines of the 
window; but it also showed Buddie the outlines of 
the man. And the man was most deliberately mak- 
ing his preparations to force his way into Miss Julia’s 


248 


BUDDIE 


house. Buddie, above, went quite beside himself 
with rage at the sight. 

Up to that instant, Buddie had formed no plan 
of action. From point to point of his way, he had 
gone on, careless, fearless, quite unreasoning. Now, 
all at once, his reasoning came back to him, and, 
with his reasoning, a plan, safe, crafty, sure as any 
plan might be in such an emergency as that, and, 
withal, not without its share of fun. Quicker than 
words could have been spoken, Buddie dropped the 
knife, and it fell upon the bed quite silently. Then, 
catching up his pillow, he bent above the rail and, 
with the skill born of half an hundred pillow-fights 
with Daddy, he hurled it down full upon the un- 
suspecting burglar underneath. The pillow was 
heavy, the blow was neatly given and the burglar 
was totally unprepared for being smitten down thus 
heavily and apparently from heaven. As a natural 
result, he fell in an inglorious heap upon the ground, 
while the searchlight, falling from his hand, turned 
about completely and came to rest with its cone of 
light directly in his eyes, dazzling him too completely 
to allow him to see at once what a thing it was which 
had bowled him over. Before the dazzle had left 
his eyes, moreover, he found himself enveloped in 
thick, soft, heavy darkness. Buddie had followed 
up the pillow with a scarlet blanket, flapping it down 
upon his foe so cunningly that it smothered him 
completely, and left him swaddled, hand and foot. 

Only an instant afterward, Buddie’s fingers had 
shut once more upon the knife, had jerked it open. 
Trigger-like, its blade snapped once, twice. Then, 
in the roughest, deepest voice which he could drag 
out of his fourteen-year-old body, Buddie shouted 


THE BURGLARS 249 

out into the night his threatening statement of the 
literal, inglorious truth, — 

“I’ve got you covered, you villain! Hands up, 
or you’re a goner!” 

The next minute, Ebenezer’s deep-mouthed bark 
summoned the servants to make fast Buddie’s pros- 
trate captive. 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


THE RIFLE MATCH 

P LOP! Plop! Plop! 

Miss Julia’s barn, long unused and now con- 
verted into a rifle range, echoed with the popping 
of miniature rifles, echoed, too, with the occasional 
applause which arose from the top of the grain bin 
in the corner. All the rest of the inner arrangements 
of the barn had been torn away: stalls, harness 
closets and the long, long racks for the mows which, 
in the old days when the Tenney place had been the 
Tenney farm, had been heaped to the very rafters 
overhead. Only the grain bin had been left intact. 
This had been at the suggestion of Buddie who had 
seen in its covers the possibility of a visitors’ gal- 
lery. Of course, the scouts were bound to have 
visitors, lots of them. Miss Julia might as well 
make provision for them, first as last. Accordingly, 
the grain bin had been spared. Furthermore, it had 
been equipped with a step ladder and a dozen folding 
canvas chairs. 

“That’s enough,” Buddie had insisted. “We 
can’t have all creation coming in here to look on. 
Only the people who have fellows in the scouts can 
come, and they will think any amount more of us, 
if we make them wait their turn.” 

In this decision, Buddie showed his wisdom. It 


THE RIFLE MATCH 251 

is the treasure which is buried deepest that one covets 
most of all. 

The barn had been the latest of Miss Julia’s many 
contributions to the scouts. Miss Julia, by now, was 
becoming almost more enthusiastic over the scout 
idea than were the boys themselves. The training 
of the youngsters to feel that reverence for their 
country demanded something else from them than 
the mere sentimental saluting of the flag; that she 
asked of them the making themselves into honest, 
loyal men, strong and clean-minded, and yet very 
gentle; that she asked them to be ready to come 
actively to her defence in case of need: all this 
seemed to Miss Julia to be very much worth while. 

She had believed in the idea from the start; her 
belief had been vastly strengthened, though, by her 
going to New York, soon after her return from the 
lake, to meet the great commander who had given 
birth to the idea, and, over an informal dinner table, 
to hear him plead its cause, not as America would 
make it, but according to his simple British notion. 
Miss Julia came back from New York, next day, 
half dazed by the humming of the score of new ideas 
within her brain. The next day after, she had sent 
for the retired West Pointer, and had spent the after- 
noon, discussing with him the most pressing needs 
of the boy scouts. Two days later, an energetic 
group of carpenters were pulling down the dusty 
haymows in the barn. 

The place would do admirably, the West Pointer 
agreed. In fact, nothing could do better. Now 
that the cold weather was so near at hand, the boys 
must think of giving up their out-door drill. Besides, 
the rifles had been there, more than a week, and — 


252 


BUDDIE 


the West Pointer laughed a little at his own con- 
fession — and it seemed to him rather dangerous 
to let the boys have target practise in the public 
streets or even in his own back yard. Miss Julia’s 
barn was huge, wide enough, and very long, after 
the old fashion which demanded that a barn should 
be large enough to hold two loaded hay wagons and 
their horses at the same time. If Miss Julia really 
felt that she could give it up — 

And Miss Julia really did. For many years, the 
old barn had been nothing but a catch-all for the 
overflow from the house. She would have it cleared 
out at once. Indeed, she telephoned to her con- 
tractor on the instant. And the contractor, being 
a Nova Scotian and honest, kept his promises and 
fell to work, not two days afterward. 

After all, though, there was not much for him to 
do. The old racks and cross-beams must be cleared 
away, the stalls pulled out, and the harness room. 
Then, with a new floor put down above the old one, 
with a coat of paint above the dust of ages, and with 
a dozen new windows and a grand new stove, the 
boy scouts’ drill shed was complete and ready for 
instant service. Meanwhile, the West Pointer had 
been busy with the Powers That Be, in preparation 
for a small surprise of his own making. 

On the last afternoon in September, Miss Julia 
invited the scouts to come in at three to inspect their 
winter quarters. At half-past two, that very after- 
noon, an expressman dumped three huge wooden 
boxes on the floor of the new drill shed. When the 
last one of the boys had straggled in, and when the 
chorus of approval had died away to an occasional 
random word, the West Pointer came down the 


THE RIFLE MATCH 253 

floor, a hammer in the one hand, a chisel in the 
other. 

“ Captain,” he said to Buddie; “I rather think 
it’s up to you to open those boxes.” 

Buddie, looking a trifle dazed, a trifle upset, too, 
at having this menial task thrown on his dignity, 
drew back a little. Then, because in reality the 
West Pointer was his commanding officer, and be- 
cause his scout’s oath had entailed obedience; and 
also because the West Pointer was not strong, and 
because his oath also had entailed assistance to the 
weak, Buddie took the hammer and the chisel, and 
fell to work. 

At first, he was more than a little awkward. The 
task took all of his strength, and would easily have 
taken twice his skill, had he possessed it. Moreover, 
the suggestions and the irreverent comments of the 
other boys did little towards the steadying of his 
hand. Finally, however, the corner of the first box 
yielded a little, the nails sighed as they loosened, 
and a long, splintery board slowly rose up at one 
end. An instant later, Buddie had given a whoop 
of utter rapture and, his dignity and his aching back 
alike forgotten, he fell upon the next board with a 
right good will. Why? Merely because the loosened 
board had brought up with it the wrapping paper 
underneath, and, through the paper’s crack, Bud- 
die’s keen eyes had discovered the gleam of bright 
brass buttons against a bed of dull brown khaki 
wool. It was not until a good while later that the 
enraptured scouts became aware that, down at the 
farther end of the barn, their commandant was busy 
fastening a row of targets to the iron-sheathed wall. 

As a matter of course, the scouts would gladly 


254 


BUDDIE 


have given all their daylight hours to drill and rifle 
practise, in the next few weeks. The West Pointer, 
though, was far too wise to allow that. He had been 
a boy, himself, not so many years ago; he knew 
just how quickly any flame, left to itself, can burn 
itself out to cold, cold ashes. Accordingly, after 
taking counsel with Miss Julia and finding her almost 
as excited and impatient as the boys, he took the 
matter entirely into his own hands and laid down 
the rules as he judged wisest. Enthusiasm was a 
good thing, granted it was lasting. However, it 
would be fatal to the whole boy scout idea, if his 
boys, once they had their rifles and their uniforms 
and a proper drill shed, should wear out their in- 
terest in a week or two, and abandon their company 
before it was half trained. The West Pointer spent 
a long, long evening in his room, a calendar before 
him, but his eyes turned backward on his own boy- 
hood and the things that had helped him most to 
become the captain that he was now, at twenty-nine. 
Boys were not all alike. Still, they had had all sorts 
to deal with at the Point. Perchance more than one 
of the old rules would hold good here. 

Next day, he astounded Buddie by the rules he 
had laid down. At first, the astonishment had to 
do with the exceedingly small number of them. 
Later, as Buddie came to know them better, his 
astonishment increased that they should cover so 
much ground. As for the details of drill and rifle 
practise, they were summed up in tersest phrase: 
absolute obedience to the officer of the day. 

The drill, to the regret of all the boys, was limited 
to two afternoons a week. After every drill, and for 
an hour on Saturday mornings, there would be target 


THE RIFLE MATCH 


255 


shooting. This was to last until, in mid November, 
there was to be a preliminary sort of competition. 
Of course, there would be a small cup; but the main 
object would be the sorting them out into squads 
for more individual training. Afterwards, each week, 
there would be one drill, one day for rifle prac- 
tise for each separate squad. By spring, they would 
be ready to have an exhibition drill and rifle match; 
in the meantime, it was to be work, not frills. 

From the first, Buddie proved himself to be a born 
marksman. He took no especial pains, it seemed, 
to hit the target. He merely blazed away, and let 
his shot go where it pleased. As a general rule, it 
pleased to go straight at the bull’s-eye. Indeed, had 
the captaincy of the scouts still been vacant, Buddie 
would have received the office by the unanimous 
vote of the boys, who delighted in his happy-go- 
lucky fashion of sending his shots home. 

Next to Buddie in success came Eric Hamilton. 
Eric, however, was the exact opposite of Buddie, in 
the way he went about his shooting. He used up 
a good ten minutes, every time he started to take aim; 
he put his finger on the trigger and withdrew it a 
good ten times, before he finally could bring himself 
to shoot. His face, meanwhile, even apart from the 
conventional squint of sighting, was wrinkled and 
drawn with his anxious care. To Eric’s earnest mind, 
the scouts were no mere social club, scouting no bit 
of sport to be taken lightly. Indeed, it was Eric’s 
way to take nothing lightly, not even the funny 
column of the daily paper, Sandy’s daily joy. As 
for an organization that wore real uniforms and 
burned real powder and concerned one’s country 
and one’s honour: that was surely an object to be 


256 


BUDDIE 


taken in all seriousness. And Eric gripped his rifle all 
the tighter, by way of giving his seriousness full play. 

To watch Eric at his shooting was a joy apart 
from all things else in life. Beside him, prone upon 
his stomach, Buddie, as has been stated, blazed 
away at random and in the hottest sort of haste. 
Eric, meanwhile, knelt down w T ith great deliberation, 
the sort of deliberation that one generally associates 
with gouty knees. Then, from his knees, he care- 
fully lowered himself to the ground where, as a rule, 
he landed at about the moment that Buddie was 
putting his final shot. And then the sightings, the 
puckering his anxious face into sinister knots the 
better to regulate his vision, the uncertain hovering 
of his finger near the trigger, and then the final shut- 
ting of his teeth which accompanied the shot! After 
that, the accuracy of his marksmanship seemed 
almost a negligible quantity, by force of contrast. 

Buddie himself praised Eric without stint. As 
for himself, he had gone into it because Daddy had 
written to him that it was the decent thing to do, 
and because, doing it, he had found it, oath and all, 
the greatest sort of fun. He liked to do it well, 
because it was in him to like anything done well. 
As for being the best marksman of them all, he did n’t 
care a pin-prick. Buddie took his sports absolutely 
for themselves, not for the sake of the cups they 
might, or might not, carry with them. However, 
he was shrewd enough to discover, quite early in 
the game, that with Eric it was altogether different. 
Eric took some comfort out of the fact that he was 
Buddie’s only worthy rival. None the less, Eric’s 
comfort was flawed by the prompt discovery that it 
would be the very bluest sort of a blue moon, before 


257 


THE RIFLE MATCH 

he could rank himself as Buddie’s equal. Besides, even 
as it was, Buddie was not half trying. If he were 
— Eric shook his head until his flaxen hair well-nigh 
lost its wonted curl, forward from behind his ears. 

October saw the rifle practise well under way, 
saw the enthusiasm of the boys mount high and 
ever higher, saw the whole number of the boy scouts 
slowly divide into just two classes. One class held 
Eric and Buddie; the other class held all the others. 
And, as October waned and November waxed to 
the preliminary competition, the others, despite their 
keen enthusiasm, were quite content to stand by, 
their rifles grounded, and watch the closer rivalry 
between their irresponsible young captain and his 
anxious, careful subordinate. Moreover, some vague 
notion of allegiance to their oaths made the scouts 
see to it that their applause should depend solely 
on the skill of the marksman, and not upon his 
personal popularity. 

Miss Julia was a frequent visitor in the drill shed, 
whenever the target practise was going on. Weeks 
since, she and the West Pointer had become the 
closest sort of friends, for a hobby ridden in common 
can prance across all manner of differences of age, 
or training, or of social ties. Together, all that 
autumn, the two of them had had great discussions, 
first over the organization and equipment of the 
scouts, then over the individual scouts themselves. 
The West Pointer had been a boy; Miss Julia 
possessed the woman’s keener intuition. Taken 
together, their combined insight made them quick 
to see the boyish good that only needed better soil 
in which to grow, the boyish faults that, wisely 
pruned and grafted, could be made over into virtues 


258 


BUDDIE 


of the strongest, soundest sort. But, wherever their 
discussions started, invariably they came back to 
the one end: the curious contrast between Buddie 
and Eric, the brilliant, erratic possibilities of the one, 
the steadfast, plodding promise of the other. As to 
which of them would be the better man, they held 
their peace. The West Pointer thought he knew; 
Miss Julia knew she did. 

Meanwhile, as November came and the day of 
the trial match was near at hand, poor Teresa was 
waxing well-nigh hysterical. It was an open secret 
among all the boys that the winning score would 
lie between Buddie and Eric. Teresa, therefore felt 
herself terribly torn between her two allegiances. 
Buddie was her chosen chum and crony; but Eric 
was her brother. Teresa was not a close student of 
her native tongue; it did not occur to her that, 
by the use of but instead of and in that connection, 
she was throwing impartiality to the four winds of 
heaven. Instead, she honestly believed that she 
had no choice at all between the two contestants; 
and it was with a lusty determination to hold fast 
to her impartiality that she clambered up upon the 
grain bin, when the great day of the match had 
come. 

The old barn, that afternoon, was steeped in yellow 
sunshine. For the one day, the violet haze of the 
Indian summer had vanished utterly. Outside the 
eastern windows of the barn, a row of hickory trees 
caught the clear sunshine of the afternoon and 
flung it back, all golden, across the drill shed floor; 
while the direct sunbeams came striking in through 
the west windows, to fall straight and true upon the 
row of targets hung to the southern wall. 


259 


THE RIFLE MATCH 

The grain bin was at the northern end, and 
crowded to its utmost capacity. Every one of the 
dozen chairs was taken by an excited parent, and 
seven or eight sisters, loyal to the point of fightiness, 
sat ranged along the edge and pounded applause 
with their ecstatic heels, until the empty grain bin 
rumbled an appreciative echo to every shot that 
plopped across the expectant silence. 

Down on the floor at everybody’s feet lay the 
marksmen, flat on their stomachs, regardless of the 
effect upon the glory of their uniforms. And, even 
greater glory, their speckless, burnished rifles gleamed 
in their hands, emblem of true war and victory, 
lustrous as was the loyalty of the boyish hearts 
against which they were cuddled. And always, one 
and one and one, the rifles barked their sharp and 
sudden note, and the white targets at the other end 
dotted themselves with flecks and blurs of black. 

Teresa held her breath and nestled a bit closer to 
Miss Julia’s feet. The West Pointer had given the 
order to cease firing, while he changed the targets 
and cried out the scores. Buddie was in the lead, 
far, far in the lead. After him came Eric, as a mat- 
ter of course. After Eric, a long way after, came 
Sandy, and then two others in a tie. 

Again the West Pointer’s whistle. 

“Begin firing,” he said tersely. 

Again there came the firing, and again it ceased. 
This time, the score was changing. Sandy was left 
far in the lurch. Eric, meanwhile, had gained on 
Buddie steadily. 

Once more there came the whistle and the rain 
of plops . Teresa, in her excitement, was gripping 
the edge of the grain bin with both hands. Eric’s 


260 


BUDDIE 


face, what could be seen of it between the pucker- 
ings, was growing grim, and his yellow hair lay wet 
across his forehead. Buddie, his face a picture of 
blithe unconcern, was emptying his rifle into the 
very bull’s-eye and, to all seeming, not caring a 
snap for his success. However, Miss Julia, listen- 
ing to the calling of the score, the final score but 
one, did care intensely. Buddie had nearly doubled 
his lead over Eric. As for the others, so far as Miss 
Julia was concerned, they did not count at all. 

It seemed to all the audience upon the grain bin 
that the West Pointer was very slow, that time, in 
putting up the fresh set of targets. Teresa banged 
her heels and whispered to the girl beside her. Miss 
Julia tied knots in the fringe of her Liberty scarf, 
while she tried her best to seem bored. The other 
mothers and sisters fidgetted and looked anxious. 
Buddie, meanwhile, flat on his stomach still, was 
chaffing the boy beside him as unconcernedly as if, 
to all appearing, the cup and the accompanying 
applause were not already won. Eric, on his knees 
at the other end of the firing squad, was very white 
and still. 

The whistle sounded. Buddie, as he dropped, cast 
a glance across the intervening backs. He saw the 
white, set face of his one rival and interpreted it 
with boyish comprehension of the crisis and what 
it meant to each of them. 

“Begin firing!” 

Plop ! Plop ! Plop ! Plop ! 

But something was the matter with Buddie, 
something sudden, and ominous of what the end 
might be. Was he ill, or nervous, or had that sudden, 
mocking glance across the line destroyed his mental 


THE RIFLE MATCH 


261 


grasp upon the target? His first shot went wild, 
the second wilder. The remaining shots went after 
them. Miss Julia caught her breath in consterna- 
tion, held it in horror. Had Buddie, the irrespon- 
sible, the un-self-conscious, succumbed at the last 
minute to stage fright? Eric, on the other hand, had 
steadied down to the final business, and was putting 
shot after shot home in a fashion Buddie, earlier, 
might well have envied. Nevertheless, for some 
reason or other, Teresa neglected to applaud. And, 
meanwhile, as the shots went on, Eric’s brow was 
increasingly anxious; but Buddie’s smile was almost 
fatuous. 

After it was all over, and Eric, in the middle of 
the floor, was showing off the cup to an admiring 
circle, Buddie vaulted up on top of the grain bin 
and squatted down beside Miss Julia’s chair. 

“Awful sorry you are disappointed. Aunt Julia,” 
he said, and, as he spoke, the smile still curved his 
lips, but an odd little light, graver and full of some 
unuttered thought, came into his brown eyes. “The 
fact of it is, I must have been badly rattled, to go 
to pieces as I did. Still,” he added nonchalantly, 
while his fingers shut on the fringe of her dangling 
scarf; “a good deal of fun has been coming my way, 
lately, with the Bishop and the burglar and all the 
rest of them, so perhaps it’s only fair for Eric to 
get his innings, just this once.” 

And Miss Julia, listening, feeling the little confi- 
dential tugging of the scarf fringe, came to the 
swift conclusion that the mere winning of a silver 
loving cup counted a great deal less than did some 
other things. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 



( NE evening, only about a week after Buddie 


had lost — or won — the prize at the rifle com- 
petition, the playhouse was the scene of a festivity 
hitherto unparallelled in its existence. Out from 
the windows, set wide open to the warm Indian 
summer night, candles flared across the darkness, 
and the fragrance of good soup and roasting meat 
was wafted on the evening breeze. Indeed, by all 
signs, it was manifest that a dinner party of some 
consequence was going on inside. 

Quite as a matter of course, Teresa was the host- 
ess. The guests were only two, Miss Julia and 
Buddie, with Sandy as an extra to fill up the table, 
to eat up the undesirable pieces and to help in the 
serving. However, it was Miss Julia who was the 
real guest of honour. It had been in a spirit of 
humility, though, that Teresa had proffered the 
invitation. 

“Would you really, Miss Julia? I’d love it. 
And we had such a splendid time together at the 
lake, you know. This time, I want to feel that 
you are my very own guest, so that we can talk it 
all over.” 

Miss Julia had accepted with a genuine enthusi- 
asm which, only the year before, would have been 
totally unknown to her in any such connection. 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 263 

Moreover, she paid Teresa the compliment of put- 
ting on one of her prettiest frocks, and wearing the 
intricate necklace of silver and turquoises which, 
Teresa had told her at the lake, always made her 
look like a girl just ready to be entering college. 

As a matter of necessity, the dinner was on a 
Saturday evening. Only a whole holiday would 
have given Teresa time to sweep and garnish the 
playhouse inside and out, to scrub Rosa’s elderly 
countenance and launder at least the outer layers 
of her clothing, and to cook the dinner to which, 
the past few days, she had given hours and hours 
of planning. If Miss Julia was dainty, Buddie was 
critical, and, as it chanced, this was to be Buddie’s 
first meal in the playhouse. Teresa made up her 
mind that it should be her own fault, though, if it 
were the last. There would be soup and a salad 
and, of course, the roast meat and vegetables which 
go to the making of any dinner. Mrs. Hamilton 
had been wise in offering advice. Together, she 
and Teresa had planned a pudding that would be 
all the better, made the day before, and together 
the two of them had vetoed anything else beside 
the cheese. 

If Mrs. Hamilton felt any undue elation over her 
young daughter’s housewifery, Teresa never knew 
it. She did know, though, that on occasions such 
as this, she could count upon her mother’s advice 
and encouragement; still more, could count upon 
it that her mother would protect her from any 
unsolicited visitations from the boys. 

All day long, Teresa toiled and moiled. Then, 
when the house was all in order; when the dinner 
was ready, all but its final touches, she skurried 


264 


BUDDIE 


across to the house to put on her best array. Noth- 
ing was too good for Miss Julia, who would be 
putting in her appearance at the playhouse, now, at 
almost any minute. It was a sleek and shining 
Teresa who, a bit later, opened the playhouse door 
to greet her guests, as sleek and shining as herself. 

Contrary to the rule which governs the quality 
of almost all the dinners served by such young 
hostesses in real life, and of literally all in fiction, 
Teresa’s dinner was a grand success from end to 
end. Sugared, not salted, meat, and a wheyed 
pudding may create mirth in the heart of the rank 
outsider; but also it creates discomfort in the heart 
of the hostess and in the stomach of the courteous 
guest. Upon that account alone, Teresa’s rich, hot 
soup, her beef done to a turn and her good pudding 
deserve the more credit. Miss Julia’s praise was 
the result of honest conviction, not of courtesy; 
and Buddie’s all-devouring appetite bore out the 
testimony of Miss Julia’s praise. As for Sandy, he 
had had his instructions. His function was to make 
the table balance properly and to eat up gratefully 
whatever was put upon his plate. His comments, 
however, were all to be reserved until some other 
time. 

Indian summer lingered late, that year. The day 
had been like a bit of belated summer, hot and hazy 
in the midday sun. The evening was almost as 
warm, so warm, in fact, that the playhouse, heated 
by the fire for roasting meat, seemed like an oven, 
and Teresa accordingly had opened the windows 
wide, wide to the mellow night. November though 
it was, only the faintest breeze came in, fluttering 
the muslin curtains, stirring the lace at Miss Julia’s 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 


265 


throat, setting the candles to winking and then to 
dancing under their scarlet shades, and then going 
to lift the crisp white skirt of the venerable Rosa 
who sat smiling at them from her own old willow 
chair. Teresa had put her there on purpose, moving 
the shabby chair from its wonted place beside the 
stove into a corner of the living-room where old 
Rosa could look on and hear the talk without get- 
ting in the way. Rosa was one of her very oldest 
friends. It was not quite loyal to leave her in the 
kitchen among the pots and kettles, when such a 
gala scene as this was taking place across the thresh- 
hold. Teresa had put her there of a set purpose. 
It did not surprise Teresa in the least when Miss 
Julia, with a short word or two, showed that she 
understood that purpose. 

All around the playhouse, the trees upon the 
lawn were quite bare by now. The breeze came in 
across them so silently that one could overhear the 
faintest sounds upon the night outside, could over- 
hear them, that is, when Buddie’s fun and Miss 
Julia’s charming chatter left any space for a pause 
to creep in. Far off, a dog was fussing and fretting 
on his chain; and, every now and then, Ebenezer, 
over on Miss Julia’s lawn, barked back at him 
encouragingly. Once, too, in the anxious pause 
which accompanied the first dip of the spoon into 
the pudding, they could hear, from the Hamilton 
house, a sound of strife, and of soft, thick blows as 
of immature, unsteady fists descending on a blanket- 
covered body. That was all, and that, curiously 
enough, only enhanced their sense of comfort. 

Buddie, his pudding half devoured, lifted his 
head and bestowed a languishing smile upon Teresa. 


266 BUDDIE 

“I say, this is great,” he told her. “Why the 
mischief have n’t you done it before?” 

“How did I know you’d care about it?” she 
retorted. 

“Don’t fish,” Buddie admonished her. “Don’t 
I always come, when you whistle? Besides, this 
has the added attraction of the eats. All in all, 
it’s the best fun I’ve had since the circus.” 

“Except the scouts,” she reminded him. “Have 
a little more pudding, while you meditate on your 
happiness.” 

Buddie passed his plate to her. Then he turned 
to face his aunt. 

“By the way, Aunt Julia, I forgot to tell you; 
but there’s an awful row on in the scouts.” 

Miss Julia looked uneasy. Jealousies were bound 
to develop, she knew. Still, she had not looked for 
them to crop up so soon. 

“What is wrong, Buddie?” she inquired. 

Buddie’s answer was short and all-embracing. 

“Everything.” Then he fell to upon his second 
supply of pudding. 

“But what?” 

Buddie had theories regarding the sort of people 
who talk with their mouths full. Therefore there 
came an interval of struggle, before he answered. 

“A man has come out from town to tell Captain 
Paddock,” Paddock was the name of the West 
Pointer — “that he doesn’t know much, and that 
he ’s started us on a wrong tack. It seems he ’s aping 
the British,” the quote-marks fairly bristled upon 
Buddie’s tongue; “and all our drill and target prac- 
tise is n’t in it.” 

Miss Julia smiled. She had heard similar talk 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 


267 


before. Undoubtedly, there was truth upon both 
sides. Therefore she saw no reason to cavil at the 
good work and the equally good enthusiasm which 
the West Pointer had been putting into the one 
thing he knew best how to do. If others were will- 
ing to work on other lines, let them come out and 
work, not stand on one side and offer criticisms. 

“What then, Buddie?” she asked him calmly. 

“Oh, he says we are n’t meant to fight at all. We 
must go out and run races, and build fires with two 
sticks, and know the names of the stars, and be able 
to find our way back home,” Buddie made detailed 
answer. 

Teresa waved her spoon in the air. 

“That all, Buddie?” 

“No; there’s lots more. We must bandage up 
people who have their heads cut off, and we must 
know the telegraph alphabet, and how to cook a 
‘sinker.’” 

“What’s that?” 

Buddie cast a glance about the dainty table, by 
way of driving home his compliment. 

“Nothing that you know anything about, Teresa,” 
he told her blandly. 

She nodded her gratitude. Then, — 

“But what does Captain Paddock say?” she asked 
him. 

“He doesn’t say; he just looks hurt and talks 
about resigning. He won’t, though. I’ll get the 
boys together, after school on Monday, and I think 
we can put it into his head that either he stays, or 
the whole scout business goes up in smoke.” 

Miss Julia smiled in swift approval. 

“You’ll never get a better commandant,” she said. 


268 BUDDIE 

Her words set Buddie off upon another griev- 
ance. 

“ That ’s another thing that ’s wrong. We ought n’t 
to have a captain, nor anything like that. He must 
be a scout-master. And our uniforms are wrong. 
They ought to be more sloppy, and we should wear 
our stockings turned down at the knees, and a hand- 
kerchief tied around our necks, like a blooming 
farmer.” 

Miss Julia felt it her unwelcome duty to offer 
protest. 

“ Blooming is a forbidden word, Buddie, and 
farmers are respectable,” she admonished him. 

“Yes; but they are n’t stylish. Besides, they do 
make things bloom; now don’t they?” Buddie 
argued. “But honestly, Aunt Julia, it was a shame 
to come here and upset everything we’ve done. It 
is n’t decent to Captain Paddock.” 

Sandy suddenly broke silence, thickly, by reason 
of his pudding. 

“ It ’s a pesky pity ! ” he observed. Then once more 
he fell into silence and upon his plate of pudding. 

Buddie, though, instead of disposing of the situ- 
ation in a phrase, felt himself inclined to keep on 
arguing. 

“Daddy wanted me to go into it, as much for the 
drill as anything — except, of course, the oath and 
being manly and all that. Daddy believes in drill. 
He says it makes us have good, strong bodies, and 
keeps our brains going, and makes us mind, whether 
we like or not. It’s the same way with the target 
shooting. It makes us know the difference between 
almost getting there, and quite. We don’t have to 
go out and lick the Japanese, because we know the 


269 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 

drill; and we need n’t shoot Pet-Lamb, just because 
we know enough to hit a target. Anyhow, Captain 
Paddock has given all this summer and fall to — 
Hullo! What in thunder is ailing Ebenezer?” 

To all seeming, Ebenezer was scouting on his own 
account, and having troubles of his own, the while 
he scouted. Across the quiet Indian summer breeze 
and cutting in upon the phrase of Buddie, there came 
a short, sharp bark, another bark, and then a verit- 
able torrent of remonstrance. Buddie lifted up his 
head, and at the same time, his voice. 

“Ebenezer, be still!” he said; and the china dishes 
throbbed and thrilled with the volume of his tones. 

For the space of five whole minutes, Ebenezer was 
still. 

“Cats,” Buddie explained, in the interval. “Well, 
as I was saying, we boys are going to have a meeting, 
Monday, in the barn. When we have talked the 
matter up a little, we’re going to send to Captain 
Paddock to come down, and then we’re going to tell 
him just what we think of him, and what we mean 
to do.” 

“And that?” Miss Julia queried. 

“Is to keep on, just the way we’re doing. If they 
don’t like us to keep up the name of scouts, we’ll 
change, and call ourselves Paddock’s Rifles. Any- 
how, it’s up to them to — ” Again the echoes woke. 
“Ebenezer! Be still!” Then Buddie ended tran- 
quilly, “to stop us, if they can.” 

But Ebenezer, lacking the proper training of a 
scout, showed himself mutinous and disregarded 
orders utterly. He not only would not be still; but 
he increased the volume and the volubility of his 
remonstrances. He barked until his breath failed 


270 


BUDDIE 


him, and then he took to growling until such time 
as, his vocal cords a little rested, he could resume 
his more audible comments upon the situation. 
Whatever the situation might be, moreover, it was 
plain that it displeased Ebenezer, displeased him 
increasingly. It was equally plain, also, that Eben- 
ezer was viewing the situation from all sides. His 
voice came, now from the verandah, now from the 
front gate, now from the shrubberies beside the path. 
Then, all at once, it jumped back to the front veran- 
dah, jumped back there and remained, while the 
night silence was torn and tattered with his resonant 
objections. No mere mortal cat, it seemed, could 
have been sufficiently bulky and persistent to have 
aroused so great a storm of defiance from a dog of 
Ebenezer’s jovial temperament. 

“What can it be, Buddie?” Miss Julia asked him 
rather timorously, for her nerves had been a good 
deal shaken by the attempted burglary of a month 
before. “Something must be wrong.” 

Buddie chuckled. 

“Anyhow, Ebenezer thinks there is,” he answered. 
“Wait a minute, though, till I can make him hear. 
I want to call him off. There’s no especial sense in 
his making such a row as that.” 

“Go out and see what’s the matter,” Teresa sug- 
gested. 

Buddie shrugged his shoulders. 

“Not if I know myself,” he said. “I’m having 
much too good a time inside, and there’s one more 
heap of clean little plates, over there on that side 
table. I propose to see this thing through.” 

“Apparently so does Ebenezer,” Teresa said 
flippantly, as she rose at Buddie’s obvious hint and 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 271 

prepared the table for the clean little plates that 
had caught his eye. 

“But really, Buddie, I am afraid — ” 

“Ebenezer isn’t, Aunt Julia,” he reassured her, 
with a careless laugh. “After all, that’s the main 
thing to be considered. He sounds like a bold and 
raging lion, ready to eat up anything from a pussy- 
cat to a gigantic miscreant.” 

Teresa giggled. 

“He’d eat up anything at all. I never saw such 
an appetite,” she said. “It’s worse than Sandy’s.” 

Sandy aroused himself from dreamy contemplation 
of his scraped-up plate. 

“ Oh, come now ! ” he protested. 

“I’m coming. Really, Buddie, I begin to be a 
little anxious for fear Ebenezer will split his throat. 
He’s actually hoarse, with so much barking. Run 
out and see what’s the trouble, there’s a dear.” 

But Buddie’s eye had caught sight of the some- 
thing evidently destined to be eaten on the clean 
little plates. 

“Pish! Tush! By and by, Teresa,” he said in- 
dolently. 

Once again Sandy spoke, this time malignly. 

“ ’Fraid?” he queried briefly. 

Buddie pushed back his chair with absolute 
decision. 

“Not. I’m not made like that,” he said. “Here 
goes. Don’t eat everything up, while I am gone.” 

But Miss Julia had risen also. 

“I think I’ll go with you, Buddie.” 

“Nonsense, Aunt Julia! What’s the use?” 

Her smile was a little bit uncertain. 

“No use; it’s only more sociable. Besides, Bud- 


272 BUDDIE 

die, I really think that something must be 
wrong.” 

Then her heart warmed at his tone of elderly pro- 
tection, the while he flung his arm around her waist. 

“All the more reason you should n’t go, Aunt 
Julia. That’s what I’m for, you know, to see you 
through things.” 

Nevertheless, in the end Miss Julia did go, too. 
Moreover, Teresa rebelled and refused to be left 
behind with Sandy, who remained to guard — and 
garner in — the final goodies of the feast. Accord- 
ingly, after a brief period of objection on the part 
of Buddie, of argument and protest upon that of 
Teresa and Miss Julia, the three of them set forth 
upon their tour of investigation. Buddie, to all seem- 
ing, was entirely unconcerned; Teresa’s long yellow 
pigtails, though, were quivering with suppressed 
excitement, with feverish anticipations, even with 
hopes that once again it would prove to be a real 
burglar, so that now she herself could have a share 
in the fun of his capture. Between them walked 
Miss Julia, her long silk gown caught up and wound 
about her, her head held high above her turquoise 
necklace which brought the pink into her cheeks, 
the clearer light into her brown eyes. Whatever 
the past history of the possible intruder, it seemed to 
Teresa that it could have held in it the meeting with 
few more gracious and attractive women than Miss 
Julia, few more indomitable in their haughty pride. 

Ebenezer’s troubles, meanwhile, appeared to be 
increasing. To judge from the sound, he had left 
the verandah once more, and was now upon the gra- 
vel walk that led down across the lawn to the front 
gate. At first, this was only manifested by the 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 273 

changed direction of his voice. Then, as the trio, 
silent and treading cautiously, drew nearer, they 
could make out, between the barking, the grinding 
of the gravel, the low growls of Ebenezer which 
were punctuated, every now and then, by the un- 
mistakable sound of rending woollens and, occa- 
sionally and very faint, a human sort of noise, half 
sigh, half something infinitely more profane. And 
then the barking arose once more, and drowned all 
other noises in its furious sound. 

With the coming of the night, the haze had settled 
down more thickly. It blotted out the stars com- 
pletely. The front of the house was all in darkness, 
by reason of Miss Julia’s absence, and the street 
lamp was quite too far away to throw any light upon 
the scene. Nevertheless, as the three of them came 
nearer, they could make out the stiff, taut figure of 
a man, an abnormally tall man he looked to be in 
the darkness. Hanging to his rearmost folds of 
clothing and shaking them madly now and then, so 
madly that the tall man shook with them as shakes 
the reed when the beaver passes by: hanging to the 
extreme rear of his clothing, Ebenezer, his paws 
thrust hard into the gravel and the whole weight of 
his great gray body and his powerful jaws bent to 
the task of holding the intruder from entering the 
house in the absence of its mistress. 

Buddie’s quick eye was the first one to make out 
the situation. Clear and sharp across the night 
rang out his voice. 

“Hold him, Ebenezer! Good boy! Hang on!” 

“Oh, Buddie!” Miss Julia’s hand shut on his 
elbow. “It is another burglar, or a sneak thief. 
What if he is armed?” 


274 


BUDDIE 


“He can’t get at Ebenezer,” Buddie reassured 
her. 

“No,” Miss Julia responded, with unanswerable 
truth; “but he can get at us.” Then, of a sudden, 
she apparently resolved to forestall that danger, and 
her voice rang out in shrill encouragement. “Eat 
him up, Ebenezer! Sic ’em! Ebenezer, eat him 
up, all up!” 

And Ebenezer ’s yowl of comprehension, flung forth 
from between his clenched jaws, assured Miss Julia 
that he would do his doggish best to carry out her 
orders. 

But man proposes, and sometimes something else 
disposes of his propositions. 

Ebenezer’s comprehending assent was followed by 
a fresh and more violent shaking, followed, too, by 
the fresh rending of a tough wool garment. In the 
dim light, they could see the intruder totter and 
wobble unsteadily to and fro. Then, when he was 
upright once more, and free save for the monster 
clinging to his raiment, he spoke, not threateningly, 
not profanely, but in one simple word, low and quiet 
and yet curiously insistent in its cadence. 

“Julia!” was all he said. 

And then it was that Buddie and Teresa were 
filled with a swift terror lest Miss Julia had gone 
mad. Dropping their interlocking arms, dropping 
the train of her long, pale frock, she flung herself 
directly upon the intruder who, although tottering 
beneath Ebenezer’s latest onslaught, yet contrived 
to catch her in his arms. 

“Brooks!” she said. And then she burst out cry- 
ing on his shoulder, while Ebenezer, his teeth still 
shut upon the garment, sat down on the gravel and 


EBENEZER MAKES GOOD 27 5 

stared up at them both in hopeless, helpless aston- 
ishment. 

It was Teresa who finally discovered that she had 
a voice, and used it. 

“It’s that insurance man come back again,” she 
whispered. “Come, Buddie, let’s go.” 

And Buddie went. In his haste and in his mental 
agitation, however, he totally neglected to call off 
Ebenezer. Therefore Ebenezer continued to sit 
there in the gravel, his teeth clinched through a 
tattered section of black broadcloth, and his great 
gray eyes alight with happiness that he had caught 
and held this intruder, over whose capture Miss 
Julia was shedding so many happy tears. After 
this, Ebenezer was reflecting smugly, he could maul 
Pet-Lamb and upset the tea table to his heart’s 
content, himself unpunished and unscathed. 

In this belief, his logic was unimpeachable. Once 
and for all time, it had been given to the tousled 
Ebenezer to make good. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


buddie’s Christmas gift 

“ AUNT JULIA, how do you do your Christmas?” 

Buddie queried, as he came dashing into the 
dining-room at luncheon time. 

Miss Julia roused herself from the happy dream 
in which, to Buddie, looking on, it seemed as if she 
had been living, ever since she had heard and recog- 
nized the voice of Ebenezer’s captive, a dozen nights 
before. Buddie was glad of the happiness; but he 
disapproved of dreams on principle. If facts were 
facts, and good, one might as well wake up to the 
full enjoyment of them. 

That the facts were good, however, there was very 
little room for question now in the mind of any one. 
Miss Julia, though, was not asking many questions. 
She was merely living along from day to day in a 
mood of supreme content. What mind she had to 
spare from the contemplation of her present happi- 
ness, she gave up to self-congratulation that her 
old-time prejudices had vanished; that, in those 
past few months, she had grown too broad to sub- 
mit to the cramping of her life within its former 
narrow lines. And that broadening: had it come 
in part from Buddie? Or, perchance, had Ebenezer 
had a frowsy paw in it, too? 

Ebenezer, clothed in yards upon yards of new 
necktie, was bearing himself proudly in these latter 


BUDDIE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT 277 


days. His appetites were pampered, until he wad- 
dled fatly. His tangle-covered ears were stuffed 
with praises of his great wisdom in discovering and 
seizing the one guest of all the world whom Miss 
Julia would have been most loath to miss by reason 
of her absence, in holding him fast, albeit not too 
respectfully, and in lifting up his voice to call the 
missing hostess back to her social duties. Just how 
or why the unexpected guest had put himself in 
Ebenezer’s way, as yet had not been fully explained. 
Buddie, with implicit confidence in Ebenezer’s genius, 
insisted upon it that, passing in the street outside, 
he had been pounced upon and dragged up to Miss 
Julia’s very portal. Miss Julia blushed becomingly 
and vaguely talked about special providences, the 
while she caressed the frowsy head as it lay in her 
lap. As for the guest himself, he merely shut his 
jaws for an occasional minute. The rest of the time, 
he was busy, urging upon Miss Julia the prompt 
adoption of certain of his plans. 

December had come by now, and cold and storm, 
and with them all had also come a degree of skating. 
Down in the Hamilton orchard, the brook no longer 
chattered; either it grumbled, or else was silent 
absolutely. The playhouse was deserted, except on 
Saturdays when Teresa made up her weekly fire in 
the kitchen stove and, in the intervals of cooking 
luncheon, stitched away upon the mysterious bits 
of work which invariably herald the approach of 
Christmas. 

Thither, one December morning, Buddie had fol- 
lowed her, quite uninvited. He had entered, upon 
the very heels of his own knock upon the door; but 
he was too intent on brushing the light snow out of 


£78 


BUDDIE 


Ebenezer’s tresses to pay any great attention to the 
panic-stricken fashion in which Teresa, at his com- 
ing, doubled her work into a bundle and, lacking 
other hiding-place, sat down on top of it. 

“What doing?” Buddie asked her tersely, as soon 
as he could disengage his mind from Ebenezer. 

“Watching the kettle boil.” 

“Hh! With your thimble on?” 

Teresa had the grace to blush. Then she remem- 
bered suddenly that fibs are quite allowable at 
Christmas time. 

“I was sewing up a rip,” she replied mendaciously. 

Buddie fished in the depths of his trouser 
pocket. 

“Oh, I say, that reminds me,” he said suddenly. 
Then he eyed the handful of assorted trifles he had 
brought forth, shook his head and laid them on the 
table, preparatory to another descent into the pocket. 

“Well?” Teresa inquired, as her eyes rested dis- 
dainfully upon the motley collection outspread be- 
fore her. 

“Wait a jiffy, unless I’ve lost it. No. Yes. No; 
here it is.” And Buddie produced a button, rather 
sticky and with a number of crumbs clinging to its 
concave surface. “Would you very much mind 
sewing this on for me, Teresa? I ’ll do as much for 
you, some day.” 

“Doubted.” Teresa laughed at his pleading ac- 
cent. “That is, if you attempt it with a needle. 
Where does it go, Buddie? ” 

“The top one but one. Wait, though, I’ll take 
it off.” And Buddie, shorn of his coat, sat down on 
the floor beside the stove. “For a fact, you ’re a good 
soul, Teresa. I hated like thunder to ask you; but 


BUDDIE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT 279 

Aunt Julia is in such a twitter, these days, that it 
seemed a shame to haul her down to anything so 
rubbishy as buttons.” 

“It might depend a little bit upon the button, 
though,” Teresa observed rebukingly, as she prodded 
with her needle at the sticky mass that clogged the 
button’s holes. 

This time, it was Buddie ’s turn to blush. He did 
it with so good a will that his hair faded, by com- 
parison with his face. 

“I couldn’t help it, if the doughnut crumbled,” 
he defended himself. 

“Doughnut! Buddie!” Teresa’s accent was dis- 
dainful. 

“Yes. Two for five, with sugar on. They’re 
licking good, too,” Buddie assured her. 

Her needle threaded and lifted for the stroke, 
Teresa paused and looked down at him in a vain 
attempt at chastened patience. 

“How coarse you boys’ tastes are!” she said. 

Buddie crossed his feet, tailor- wise, and came to 
rigid attention. 

“They aren’t, too,” he contradicted. “Every 
boy that’s half a boy eats doughnuts.” 

Teresa gave a patient sigh. 

“Have n’t I got nine brothers?” she asked Buddie. 
“I should think I ought to know.” And then, with 
the same air of chastened patience, she put down the 
needle and the coat, rose and crossed the room to 
the small pantry in the corner. “Here, try these,” 
she said. “Are n’t they as good as the two-for-five 
ones, Buddie?” 

Buddie, with an ecstatic bounce and scramble, 
fell upon the contents of the plate in her hands. 


280 


BUDDIE 


“Bet you!” he said uncouthly. “ Where ’d you 
get ’em? ” 

“I made them, myself. I’ve only just aired out 
the room, after the frying.” Teresa seated herself 
once more with anxious haste. 

“Look out ! ” Buddie warned her swiftly. “ You ’re 
sitting on something.” 

“Only a new cushion. This chair has been so 
hard,” Teresa reassured him tranquilly. Then she 
sought to create a diversion. “Won’t you have 
another?” 

“Dozens more, if I may.” Buddie held up his 
plate appealingly. 

Too late, Teresa realized her dilemma. It was 
desirable, all things considered, that she should not 
quit her chair again during Buddie’s visit; but the 
pantry was in the farther corner of the room. Not 
even the long arm of justice could reach so far as 
that. She chose the lesser ill. 

“All right. Help yourself,” she told him rashly. 
Later on, however, she doubted the wisdom of her 
choice. 

“Aunt Julia ’s gone out driving,” Buddie said, 
when once more he could speak distinctly. 

Teresa shivered. 

“This cold day?” 

“She had on furs enough to keep warm. She was 
going by the shore road, too, and that ’s sunny.” 

“With her insurance man?” Teresa queried. 

“Yes; only he doesn’t do insurance any more; 
it’s engineering now.” 

“How can he?” Teresa inquired skeptically. 
“He’s too old to have been to college since.” 

Buddie turned literal. 


BUDDIE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT 281 

“Since what?” 

Teresa shrank from the downright word. 
Instead, — 

“Since that other time I told you about,” she 
said evasively. “And he was too old to go to 
college even then, so how can he engineer?” 

Buddie spoke out a truth which is too often dis- 
regarded. 

“ College is n’t the only canning shop, Teresa. 
The can that ’s in a fellow is born there, not read out 
of books.” 

“Maybe. But I didn’t suppose — How soon do 
you think they will?” Teresa made fragmentary 
rejoinder, as she tossed the coat, button and all, 
down across Buddie’s knees. 

“Not till after Christmas, anyhow. By the way, 
Teresa,” Buddie, one arm inside his coat, looked up 
in sudden question; “how does Aunt Julia manage 
Christmas? So far, she has n’t said a thing about 
it.” 

Teresa’s reply was wiser than she knew. 

“She lets it manage her, I think. Anyway, she 
never seems to do very much about it, beyond having 
Lena hang holly in the windows.” 

Buddie rose to his feet. 

“Well, anyhow, she’s got to do something about 
it, this year, or my name’s not Buddie!” 

“It isn’t,” Teresa reminded him quite unex- 
pectedly. 

Buddie glared at her in good-tempered despair. 

“ Will — you — shut — up ? ” he said slowly. “ It ’s 
no end mean to take it out upon a fellow because 
his ancestors were lunatics. Besides, if you keep 
calling me an earnest angel, before you know it, I 


282 BUDDIE 

may turn into one, and then who’d play with 
you?” 

“I don’t worry yet,” Teresa reassured him. “By 
the way, speaking of angels, what about the scouts?” 

Buddie sat down again, this time on the edge of 
the table. 

“We’re going on, the same way we have been,” 
he said decisively. “If the other fellow doesn’t 
like it, he can lump it, and cut us off his list. We 
are n’t afraid to walk alone, especially as we were 
the first ones in the field. Moreover,” as he spoke, 
he rose and chirruped to Ebenezer who had been 
slumbering on his back against the wall, his paws 
extended stiffly towards the ceiling; “moreover, I 
don’t know but there is as much good scouting sense 
in taking what is given to you and being grateful, 
as there is in making such a rumpus because it is n’t 
just exactly like the paper pattern of what somebody 
else has got.” And then he swung about upon his 
heel and left the room, with Ebenezer trudging after 
him. 

That noon, he put to Miss Julia his question con- 
cerning Christmas. Miss Julia answered him, after 
the slightest pause possible, answered him with an- 
other question. 

“How do you like best to do it, Buddie?” she 
asked him, in his own vernacular. 

Buddie’s reply was succinct. 

“Make a grand row,” he told her. 

And once again Miss Julia answered in the ver- 

no Pll Iq‘P 

“All right,” she said. “Let’s.” 

And the worst of it all was, she took quite as a 
matter of course this deviation from her old-time 


BUDDIE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT 283 

paths of decorum, both in her speech and in the 
making up of her social plans. 

In the making up of her present social plans, as 
far as these concerned the Christmas celebration, 
Buddie took an active part. Up to now, Miss Julia 
had celebrated Christmas chiefly by means of holly 
wreaths and her check book. Now and then she 
added a plum pudding; but that was really all. This 
year, Buddie ordained flatly, it must be quite differ- 
ent. There must be a surprise basket on Christmas 
eve, with the three older Hamiltons, and Pet-Lamb, 
and Ebenezer, and Ebenezer’s recent captive; 
granted, Buddie added with a giggle, that he could 
get his evening raiment patched in time. Next day, 
Christmas, must be a great day of it, with stockings, 
and a dinner with the same people and some more, 
people like Captain Paddock, for instance, who 
would n’t be having larks at home, and then a tree 
at night. And there should be a blazing big pudding, 
and heaps of tinsel things on the tree, and presents 
for Teresa and Pet-Lamb and Sandy, and holly in 
all the windows and green wreaths twisted around 
the verandah posts. And then, if only there would 
come a snowstorm, it would begin to be quite worth 
while. 

As the days went by, not went with clockwork 
and according to the calendar, but rushed and skur- 
ried, it came about that more and more it was Bud- 
die who made the plans, Miss Julia who sat by and 
took notes of them and thought out the way to 
execute them. As the days went by, too. Miss Julia 
found herself becoming more and more interested 
in the coming festival. Her interest did not wane, 
moreover, after reading the letter from Daddy, 


284 


BUDDIE 


which she found beside her plate, one morning. The 
letter had vanished, when Buddie pranced into the 
room, a little later, too eager over his latest scheme 
to notice what a smile-y, teary Miss Julia it was, 
who looked up at his greeting. 

Later, Miss Julia read the letter over twice, to 
make sure that she understood all of its instructions. 
She was anxious to follow them out the more im- 
plicitly, because she had been struck, in listening to 
Buddie’s Christmas plans, by the curious way in 
which he seemed to ignore himself in making up his 
detailed arrangements for the festive season, now 
almost at hand. 

And then the almost became the actual, and 
Christmas eve dawned, still and gray, with flakes 
of snow hanging apparently motionless in the quiet 
air. Buddie was up betimes. Indeed, it was long 
before the first streak of dawning gray that Miss 
Julia lifted her head to listen to the clatter of boyish 
heels upon the stairs, to the muffled bark of Ebenezer, 
as he went plunging joyously down upon his master’s 
heels. Her sleepy head sank back again upon the 
pillow, and her perfunctory little sigh came from 
between smiling lips. How still and calm and — 
well, she might as well confess it — bored had been 
her household, on last year’s Christmas morning! 
And now? Miss Julia’s smile grew, until a little 
dimple came into sight beside her lips, as she won- 
dered happily whether the old, dull boredom would 
ever come back to her again. Last year, she had 
sent Buddie a check for ten dollars “from his affec- 
tionate aunt, Julia F. Tenney.” This year — Well, 
Miss Julia, at this belated time of life, had gone into 
Christmas shopping with a vengeance. 


BUDDIE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT 285 

Buddie left the table, that night, with a vague 
notion that Miss Julia had made a mistake and 
served up the Christmas dinner, a day too early. 
Beside him, Sandy had eaten like a glutton, for 
dainties such as were offered him, that night, were 
unknown quantities in a household like the Hamil- 
tons\ Teresa, as the senior of her brothers, had 
taken the occasion with a temperate sedateness; but 
even Eric had yielded to the prevailing spirit of good 
cheer, and had responded cordially, when the ex- 
insurance man had tried to draw him into talk, so 
cordially, indeed, that later on, that evening, the 
ex-insurance man confided to Miss Julia his belief 
that the little Hamilton had it in him to make 
something. 

But the best of dinners must come to an end at 
last; and, as Buddie was quite well aware, even 
better things were to follow after this one. How 
much better, though, he was unaware as yet. Else, 
he might have starved himself unduly in his haste 
to reach them. 

The surprise basket was waiting for them, when 
they went into the drawing-room, a great willow 
clothes basket heaped with all manner of gay par- 
cels. Everybody had some, from the ex-insurance 
man to Pet-Lamb; and Ebenezer had at least a 
dozen. Opened one by one as they came from the 
basket, they proved to hold all sorts of jokes and 
pretty trifles, the things that cost so little to give 
and are so wonderfully good to get. Last of all, 
down in the very bottom of the basket was a wee 
scarlet package for Buddie, one no larger than a pill 
box. Indeed, he opened it to find a little box, a 
scarlet one, Inside the box was a folded card, and 


286 BUDDIE 

on the card these words, neatly printed in scarlet 
ink, — 

“I am hidden in the library,” it said. “Come 
quick, and find me.” 

Buddie’s face lost its mockery, grew puzzled; 
then it lighted. 

“Jove!” he said tersely. “Come along, Eben- 
ezer.” And he went racing out of the room, while 
Miss Julia and the ex-insurance man exchanged a 
meaning glance behind him. 

There was the shortest possible interval of silence, 
and then a whoop of utter rapture. A moment after- 
wards, Buddie came tearing back into the room, 
breathless and dragging his present after him. 

“ It ’s Daddy ! ” he shouted, above the strident 
observations which Ebenezer was offering upon the 
selfsame subject. “It ’s Daddy; and, what ’s a whole 
lot more, he has come home to stay!” 


THE END. 






ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S 

“TEDDY” STORIES 


Miss Ray’s work draws instant comparison with the best of Miss Alcott’s : first, 
because she has the same genuine sympathy with boy and girl life ; secondly, 
because she creates real characters, individual and natural, like the young people 
one knows, actually working out the same kind of problems ; and, finally, because 
her style of writing is equally unaffected and straightforward. — Christian Register , 
Boston. 


TEDDY : HER BOOK. A Story of Sweet Sixteen 

Illustrated by Vesper L. George. i2mo. $1.50. 

This bewitching story of “Sweet Sixteen,” with its earnestness, impetuosity, 
merry pranks, and unconscious love for her hero, has the same spring-like charm. — 
Kate Sanborn. 

PHEBE: HER PROFESSION. A Sequel to “Teddy: 

Her Book” 

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. i2mo. $1.50. 

This is one of the few books written for young people in which there is to be 
found the same vigor and grace that one demands in a good story for older people. 
— Worcester Sfy. 

TEDDY: HER DAUGHTER 

A Sequel to “Teddy: Her Book,” and “Phebe: Her Profession” 
Illustrated by J. B. Graff. i2mo. $1.50. 

It is a human story, all the characters breathing life and activity. — Buffalo Times . 

NATHALIE’S CHUM 

Illustrated by Ellen Bernard Thompson. i2mo. $1.50. 

Nathalie is the sort of a young girl whom other girls like to read about. — Hartford 
Courant. 

URSULA’S FRESHMAN. A Sequel to “Nathalie’s Chum” 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50. 

The best of a series already the best of its kind. — Boston Herald. 

NATHALIE’S SISTER. A Sequel to “ Ursula’s Fresh. 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50. 

Peggy, the heroine, is a most original little lady who says and does all sorts of 
interesting things. She has pluck and spirit, and a temper, but she is very lovable, 
and girls will find her delightful to read about. — Louisville Evening Post. 


LITTLE, BROWN, fc? COMPANY, Publishers 

34 BEACON ST., BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 


ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S 

“SIDNEY” STORIES 


SIDNEY: HER SUMMER ON THE 
ST. LAWRENCE 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50 

The young heroine is a forceful little maiden of sweet sixteen. The description 
of picnics in the pretty Canadian country are very gay and enticing, and Sidney 
and her friends are a merry group of wholesome young people. 

— Churchman , New York. 

JANET: HER WINTER IN QUEBEC 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50 

Gives a delightful picture of Canadian life, and introduces a group of young people 
who are bright and wholesome and good to read about. — New York Globe . 

DAY: HER YEAR IN NEW YORK 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

A. good story, bright, readable, cheerful, natural, free from sentimentality. 

— New York Sun. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. l2mo. $1.50 

The book is replete with entertaining incidents of a young woman who is passing 
through her freshman year at college. — Brooklyn Eagle. 

JANET AT ODDS 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

An ideal book for an American girl. It directs a girl’s attention to something 
beside the mere conventional side of life. It teaches her to be self-reliant. Its 
atmosphere is hopeful and helpful. — Boston Globe. 

SIDNEY: HER SENIOR YEAR 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

This delightful story completes the author’s charming and popular series of 
Sidney Books. Day, Janet, and a host of their bright friends meet again at Smith 
College, where Sidney is the President of the Senior Class, and their gayety fill 
the pages with spirited incidents. 


LITTLE, BROWN, &? COMPANY, Publishers 

34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 
























One copy del. to Cat. Div. 

* 

WSY 10 3911 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



□DQ20733A34 



